


Ceaseless Rain

by lapinchatain



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Aromantic, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Childhood Memories, F/M, Fryecest - Freeform, I wrote it because I couldn’t shut up alright, Mild Sexual Content, My English is so painful to read please don’t die, No Romance, Ok but there’s still a heavy dose of attachment, Original Universe, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, So this is a sentimental-yet-not-romantic fic?, The author sucks at narratives and is determined to stay this way, Twincest, if you're looking for drama or plot or anything remotely similar you'll be disappointed, it's basically a huge hotchpotch of drabbles and one shots, warning: learner level English so if you don't understand a thing it's normal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 23,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11023401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapinchatain/pseuds/lapinchatain
Summary: He missed the Evie back then. He missed the both of them back then, before they left Crawley and their adolescence behind, the cage they both longed to escape from. Sometimes he wondered, if they hadn’t come to London and taken on the duties that they had to take on, would they still be together?





	1. Tea

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [雨声未尽](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/383285) by lapinchatain. 



> Hooray I finally titled all the chapters! As if it was a meaningful thing to do!  
> This is your usual sort of emotionally distant, aromantic, I-don't-know-what-the-hell-am-I-writing author. Don’t expect anything fluffy...just some sentimental(?) stuff will eventually come up as the story progresses.  
> Final warning: my English is really painful to read. Don’t die.

The rain hadn’t ceased to drizzle. Jacob looked out of the window, the back of his neck still stiff and sour. The roar of the train covered the boisterous sounds of the city, mechanic and rhythmic, somehow reassuring like the raindrops on a silent night. 

“Is there any tea left?”

Evie was putting on her white chemise (she always pronounced the words from French in the most French way possible, which seemed to be another subtle manifestation of a Frye’s narcissism, according to Jacob. “Then how am I supposed to pronounce them?” she frowned), a fresh wound on her bare shoulder from the gang war yesterday. She didn’t say “do we still have some tea?”, but “is there any tea left”, in a casual way. Jacob supposed that she was just trying not to sound too intimate or domestic. He wanted to touch her skin, but his hand was briskly tapped away. Every time after Evie was satisfied, he couldn’t help but feel being used, which amused Evie sometimes. A brother attached to his sister.

“Why don’t you ask Agnes?”

He felt like Evie was only acting bossy towards him. In the past, Father would at most lecture him sternly, like a father (“You can’t put the center of gravity on only one side of your body – too risky” or “again!”), but Evie seemed to regard her domineering attitude towards him as some sort of proof of their closeness (“You haven’t got your throwing knives ready? Are you waiting for them to shoot you then?” or "I need YOU to be on that spot"). He wasn’t sure if he should feel flattered or annoyed by this special treatment. He curled his lips, still unwilling to get out of his bed. Evie’s knees had left spots of sweat on the sheet on either side of his body, her long, pale neck exposed to him with her head thrown back, giving him an almost natural urge to press his blade hard on it until the blood leaked out of her skin. There were indeed marks of his teeth on her shoulder. They were always like fighting in the bed, leaving all kinds of bruises on each other’s body.

“She’s not here yet, I’m already hungry. ” Evie shook her head and put on her trousers, dark chestnut hair down, messy on her shoulders. She wouldn’t let Jacob touch her hair; not that he’d listen to her. He enjoyed disobeying her on these minor details, nothing grave enough to infuriate her, but in a way that insinuated his challenge of her sisterly authority. After arriving in London, they had always acted separately, a great relief to both of them, yet the gang war yesterday had really left him surprised. Whitechapel was easier to conquer than he had expected, but she was almost in her element with the brawling, the crowds and the speech. God damn it, it was as if she intended to get the better of him in every possible way, despite the fact that she had always disapproved of his ideas.

Yeah, of course, she had always disapproved of his ideas (“Raspberry pie? You can’t be serious. All the raspberries of the neighborhood are sour or bitter.” She told him primly when they were eight years old. “I’m going to the market now to buy eggs and milk for a custard pie, if you haven’t engulfed all the sugar at home”). But sometimes she could be rather gentle and soft as well, such as when she was getting dressed (it felt different when she took her clothes off). Her white chemise, decorated with white laces, delicate folds and long bottom hem, hung softly beside her laps, and she had that curious absent-minded look on her face when putting it on, somewhat confused and tender, without the vigilant and sharp air she usually had. These moments of intimacy and femininity made him curious about his own sister. Sometimes she would notice Jacob staring at her, frowning at him. 

“What’s that look on your face?”

“A look of deep love.”

“Lovely.” Her tone was as if saying “enter the mansion from these two windows and take out these two guards.” 

Jacob had thought why they rarely had that typical romantic feeling between them. Maybe it was because they were both simple and straightforward assassins who could take away a life in the blink of an eye, whose worst nightmare was to give things meanings that they weren’t supposed to have. They were sleeping in the same room until fourteen years old-Father’s arrangement could be bizarre sometimes. Evie changed her clothes in another room before going to bed, the gentle sounds of her night dress brushing against the floor intruding into Jacob’s head. He was thirteen when he discovered that he couldn’t fall asleep with that sound, turning over restlessly on his own bed, while Evie remained rather quiet opposite him, making him wonder whether she was really asleep. One night, Evie got up from her bed, walked towards his bed, ripped his covers off him, straddled him and took one hand of his to her breasts. 

It was just like her studying and researching relentlessly to obtain the Piece of Eden, or pushing the cane-sword into the head of some misfortunate blighters to take down the target behind them, she couldn’t know better her own intentions and desires. They only needed to “want” and “go for it”, and stay oblivious to the reason behind it. 

Evie seemed to be doing a great job in this regard. Maybe she only needed his body to feel him and confirm the fact that he was still alive. Their differences and disagreement would sometimes make it easy to forget how much they needed each other, and her body was only a way of reminding him of that. 

“You must be joking,” Evie said once, “do you really think I’d feel nothing when I see your naked body in the training ground?”

Yes, he was probably overthinking. Evie always knew what she wanted and knew even better how to get it.


	2. Father

“Ten minutes, half way through.” Father said, pacing back and forth behind them, not so much out of impatience as of a soothing habit. The two kids barely reached his chest. They grabbed the iron bar above the doorframe of the kitchen, their skinny bodies hanging only on their fingers, striving to keep still. At some point Jacob thought he’d fall to the ground – how could he bear so much torture?

“This, is the basics of the basics, of any assassin’s training.” Father repeated. “Fingers and forearms. Any weakness of these two parts of your body equals your death.”

Evie didn’t make any sound next to him, which made him hilariously think of the sausages the neighbor hung in their yard. This thought reminded him of his hunger again, though the hunger wasn’t particularly part of their training. However, Father did say that they had to learn to deal with extreme physical conditions. The most extreme physical condition Jacob had to endure so far was the fighting training with Evie; Father never did it himself, not at this stage, maybe for the fear that the children couldn’t handle his force yet, but it turned out that Jacob wasn’t spared from his fair share of suffering either with Evie as his counterpart. His dear sister, the same pretty little girl in her white cotton dress who sat quietly in the yard on summer evenings eating grapes, barefoot, fresh juice on her red moist lips, hit his jaw with a solid blow on the boxing ring in their backyard one afternoon, making him collapse to the ground, holding him down gracefully by shoving her knees on his chest. “Three, two, one, you’ve lost.” Her tone wasn’t exactly cold, but had a matter-of-fact plainness to it. The bruise on his jaw didn’t disappear until a few days later, the pain of it making him scrunch his face every time he brushed his teeth in the evening. When he went back to their room, Evie was in her bed reading under the dim candle light (Lettres Persanes by Montesquieu, a gift from their Father’s friend, Jacob had caught a glimpse of the cover when Evie wasn't around, not that he’d be interested in reading. George had always had a dull taste in books, after all), turning over a page.

“Does it still hurt?”

She didn’t raise her head. Jacob hummed, suddenly feeling wronged. She could have hit him less hard. Maybe having heard the grievances in his voice, Evie put her book aside, jumped off the bed and walked over to him.

“Let me see.” She said with an experienced tone, sounding like the nurse in the clinic of the town (Jacob could never remember it was Jeanne or Joan, only remembering her thick white headband like a nun, square jaw, stern look). Father barely allowed them to go to the clinic, saying that they had to deal with extreme conditions on their own (Jacob wondered what extreme conditions did he go through), and had prepared all the basic medications and supplies at home. The two children knew since very young how to make splint, bandage the broken limbs, sew the wounds, sterilize them with burnt needles and alcohol, the names and functions of different balms. Evie’s hands were as callous as his for their endless hanging and climbing trainings, yet her touch on his jaw was gentle and soft, like the warm covers in the bed on a raining morning.

“If I had hit you a bit lower, ” she said, “your jaw bone would have been broken. You can dodge like this towards the right side,” she took his hand, approaching it slowly to her face from underneath on the left, then turning her face towards the right side, grabbing his wrist with her right hand. “Pull it hard in the same direction and your opponent will lose his balance.” She let go of his hands, watching him calmly. “Do you want to try again?”

He shook his head but then nodded, getting himself prepared in their bedroom.

She didn’t apologize to him in the end. Jacob felt as if she was creating a sense of distance between them on purpose, so that he would be more obedient to her; she was only closer to him when they were still living with their Grandmother. Grandmother would take the two kids to the small wood on the back of the hill when the weather was lovely. Evie sat on the grass in her red long dress, her light chestnut long hair falling across her back (the two kids were nearly blond when born, the color of their hair only growing darker as they aged), carefully cutting the cheese into pieces and putting them on the bread. Jacob reached one hand out trying to grab the sweet-smelling cheese, and Evie tapped his hand away, hushed him, then kissed his eyelids, giggling.

He didn’t remember Grandmother very well. All memories before six years old were blurred and vague, turbid like well water after a storm. He could only remember sometimes when he got up in the morning, he could see Grandmother braiding Evie’s hair in the sunny balcony, his sister sitting on a chair, singing a familiar nursery rhyme, legs swaying back and forth. Grandmother taught them to read with a worn-out alphabet book on the uneven surface of a wood desk, Evie sitting next to him, her quill moving swiftly. She was much faster of a book learner than he was (“What a brilliant kid!” Grandmother said proudly, intentionally not mentioning Jacob) and had soon learned to recite Wordsworth’s sonnet. Their teacher at the school in town, a young man who had once studied at Oxford said Evie was the most intelligent kid he had ever encountered, giving her a lot of books of his unfinished university’s time (could she really understand Shakespeare? Jacob thought glumly) and telling them that he would like to go to America one day. What a strange name, Jacob thought. After so many years, maybe he had already died of some rare disease in those dangerous jungles.

Jacob couldn’t even remember the first time they saw Father, having only a vague impression of this strange man’s bronzed skin that was different from that of everyone else he knew. “This is your Father; from now on, you will live with him.” Grandmother seemed to announce. Did she say he had just come back from India? Jacob had only heard this name a few times before, India, sounding like a fragile porcelain, a reflection of a luxurious palace with burning sandalwood and dizzy incense in the water, scattered by a piece of cobblestone. Why, it suddenly struck to him, had Father never come home before?

Jacob didn’t know what the word “mother” meant in a long time. Every time he heard other boys say “mom’s stew” or “mom’s going to hit me with her broom”, he felt a strange bewilderment, like the first time he heard the name India. It wasn’t that he missed their Mother – how could one miss something that had never existed?

He had only missed Evie, if she had gone to the market with Grandmother and hadn’t returned by noon. She would always bring him sweet-smelling cheese, seed bread, fresh eggs, butter and caramel pound cake. Evie saw him begging her for food, giggling.

“Jacob looks like a little dog.” She told Grandmother. What would it be like to have his own little dog? Jacob couldn’t imagine. On muggy summer afternoons, he fell asleep in a daze on Evie’s shoulder, who was reading A Description of Three Hundred Animals by Thomas Boreman, where there were cat, dog, hare and fox, and many other strange creatures he had never heard of before. 

“I don’t like Father,” he said, “I prefer to live with Grandmother.”

Evie gave him a look, as if he had just said something stupid.

“He is our Father.” She claimed, as if this statement alone could erase all his doubts. He didn’t know whether it was because she was closer to Father by nature (“Father’s little girl”, as he always said bitterly), or because Evie had a straightforward kind of mind that tended to avoid all unnecessary problems. In either case, he felt equally offended.

Father was here. Their life as assassins had begun.


	3. Whitechapel

Evie had always acted in a (self-)righteous way in front of others (“we will free London from the Templars – you have my words”, who would say that? Especially before someone they had just met. It sounded ridiculously hilarious to Jacob). It wasn’t that he questioned her moral sense or motivations. Evie was indeed the most decent person he had ever known, “just like Father”. Jacob had thought that maybe Father was more like him when he was young or deep down inside.

He couldn’t figure out how Alexander Graham Bell could be attractive. Anyway, it’s better than the both of them trying to flirt with him at the same time.

“What did you say?” Evie’s reaction was exactly what he had anticipated. “You only say that because he’s Scottish.”

Again, he had no idea how these two things could be related. How could his own sister suspect him of being a xenophobic extremist? Not that he was interested in politics. When Evie took the rope launcher from his hand swiftly and asked Alex to install it on her gauntlet, he could swear that she was doing this on purpose. Not in the sense that she was trying to make him jealous (“Jealous?” he could imagine her snort. “For god’s sake Jacob, I’m much better off doing my research alone without your disturbing my attention. I don’t care whether you’re with a man, a woman or an octopus”), but – she was just like that, always taking whatever she fancied. Jacob tried to imagine his sister acting in a seductive way, like the girls standing in the dark alleys in Whitechapel. This image gave him goose flesh but didn’t seem completely impossible either.

She was acting in the same way with Henry Green too; Evie could be really bold sometimes. Crawley was a small place and he knew he couldn’t do whatever he pleased, not with Father around. Of course, there were exceptions. A boy called Joseph was in the church’s choir, pharmacist’s son, dark hair and blue eyes, two or three years older than him (he always seemed to be attracted to the more mature type and he didn’t want to know why), casting him a cold look in front of the porch on a Sunday evening, curling his lips and leaving for the churchyard behind. Jacob went home later that day, heart racing fast in his chest, sneaking back to his room and closing his door, tucking himself into bed and turning around to face the wall. The light was still on in Evie’s room, who might be reading some naughty literature (she always had an insatiable curiosity, didn’t she?), he thought, then decided not to tell her anything. The next morning during the breakfast, after Father had left home for the Council, Evie said casually, as if talking about the weather, “Let’s see now if you can buy some laudanum with a cheaper price,” pricking a sausage with her fork from the pot. Oh, hell. She was his sister, after all.

Henry Green liked Evie. The three of them all knew that but nobody had said anything yet. Jacob liked the kukri and the firearm that Greenie had given to him and that was more than enough for him to like the man. He even found Greenie’s curiosity shop marvelous, filled with a lovely and clichéd exotic air that matched quite well what Evie had expected from the Indian man (“I beg your pardon?” she said, lifting one eyebrow. Of course, how could she admit something like that?). On the contrary, he seemed clueless about Evie’s feelings towards Greenie. Evie wasn’t someone that someone like _him_  could easily see through, like she had always implied, just in the same way that he couldn’t understand the sublime (what the hell does that mean? He thought impatiently) emotions in Shakespeare’s works, nor could he appreciate the elegant style and the genuine passion in _Les Confessions_ (“Mon plus grand malheur fut toujours de ne pouvoir résister aux caresses”, her excerpt read, which didn’t sound like Evie at all), nor would he share her idea about how important the god damned Piece of Eden was. Most importantly, he always had the impression that she looked down on him. They were like two children who were always angry with each other, avoiding playing each other’s favorite game.

“You’re not starting a gang called the Rooks,” she said authoritatively, as if he would listen.

But Jacob did like Frederick Abberline, not only because he disguised himself as a bearded old woman. Deep down, he had a calm and stable nature, despite the nervous and agitated impression he might give. He might spend the rest of his life with someone like that, perhaps (not with Freddy himself, for god’s sake)? Maybe that’s why Evie might be fond of Greenie too. Alexander was still too young, and Evie was probably just having some fun with him, nothing serious.

Clara was another story. He hated that lass for no reason.

They finally felt at home when they set foot on the train from Kaylock. They hadn’t decided yet how to share the wagons, nor had they bought the comfortable armchair and bed for Evie or the ridiculous couch for Jacob. They were simply rolling on the ground in the dark, kiss and touch hasty and hungry on each other’s body, the rhythmic howl of the train underneath them, matching their own movements. Evie suddenly tightened her fingers on his shoulder, letting out a wail that could even cover the mechanic roar, her soft skin wet against his, her head drawn back like a marble statue in ecstasy.

“I guess the problem with intimacy here might be less grave than in Crawley,” Jacob shouted, “but I don’t think you can do whatever you want here either.”

“I can do whatever I want here to make you shut up, dear brother.”

Oh Evie. Well, she was actually doing quite the contrary.

“I had never felt at home since I came to England,” a young lad said shyly in front of the crowds in the pub the other night, “I had always wanted to go back to Cork. But now I feel like I belong here.” (Right at this moment someone blew a low whistle in contempt, “paddy”, a scene that seemed hilariously ironic to Jacob, though he shouldn’t take sides as boss). Where did Jacob belong then?

They felt like a new world had opened its gate to them when they first arrived in London. The failure that Father had there had left him with the impression that London was all gloom and doom, but the first time when he set foot on its soil, everything seemed bright and brand new, waiting to be discovered, explored and most importantly, created, despite the industrial fog and fluttering soot that had left everything dusty and filthy in Whitechapel. It was the first time that he had left the shadows of the past behind and embraced his new freedom.

Evie was standing next to him in silence, but he could sense that she was sharing the same feeling. In this moment, together, they had left aside their disagreement and embraced the overwhelming advent of adulthood. Evie took his hand and he didn’t let go.

He had never felt particularly “at home” since he was a little boy. But there, he felt that as long as Evie was still there, despite all the differences they had, he would always have somewhere to go back to.


	4. Naughty literature

Evie clutched the notebook she had just procured from Lucy Thorne, scowling at Jacob on the roof of the train. The Templars pursuers were still roaring with rage on the bridge that was soon lost on the horizon, and the cheeky grin on Jacob’s face gave the wrong impression that he wasn’t responsible for the mission’s disastrous outcome.  

Even though Evie couldn’t know her brother better, she was still shocked every time to see Jacob, well, being Jacob. However, if she was to reproach him seriously, he would certainly retort. “It was you who said I could join you!”

Such a reckless, impetuous and irresponsible bastard (that might not be the correct expression in their case but sod it).

Jacob jumped off the roof, his voice blurred by the roaring of the engine and the night wind. “Stay where you are if you want some more fresh air, I’m off. You know where to find me!”

That just didn’t sound right. Where did he get that confidence, that she would come to him after all the mishaps of the night?

But he was indeed the one who always waited for her first move. On an autumn evening when they were thirteen years old, after an exhausting fighting training session, they both collapsed onto the ground panting, without saying a word. She was feeling the drowsiness creeping in, when suddenly her shoulder touched his. He jumped up instantly, rushing towards the kitchen.

“Your highness,” Jacob was sitting on his couch, raised his eyes from his gun and tipped at her, pretending to be surprised while unable to hide a nearly childish delight. She took him by his lapels and hushed him, wondering how did he know she’d come. She could leave the notebook for tomorrow as Henry might be interested in it (that wasn’t exactly a fitting moment to think about Henry).

She felt that the lack of initiative on Jacob’s side might be due to her own obsession with having everything under control, but it wasn’t that he didn’t know how to respond to her moves. His eyes were between amber and green like a feline animal, and the way he kissed her indeed reminded her of a cat, ginger yet somehow hungry, but rarely aggressive.

“Jacob?”

“Hum?”

His head was in the crook of her neck (the right side was more sensible than the left side), his voice hoarse. She wasn’t sure if it was because of his implication or the noise of the train in the background.

She grabbed his hand and bit gently on his fingers. “I want you to make me cry.”

The sudden waves of pleasure from her breasts made her whole body shudder, her head drawing back instinctively, barely able to contain the sounds from the depths of her throat. They dared not be so reckless when they were back in Crawley. Jacob suddenly lifted her right leg and pushed into her without preamble, her gasp sealed in with a nearly forceful kiss.

It seemed that Jacob could only concentrate his attention in moments like this (“I beg your pardon?” Evie could imagine him being offended by this statement and she had to admit that they both had some sort of strange pride). She was even fond of this look of his between seriousness, implication and deep emotion and couldn’t help taking his face in her hands and pressing a kiss on the corner of his lips. Watching him grow up was a mixed experience. Her younger brother used to be a lovely little blond boy who followed her around asking for cake, and after the puberty began, with the hair color of the both of them beginning to grow darker (“At least someone looks smarter right now!” she remembered him say gleefully), Jacob had changed more than Evie in general (it was George who made this remark which sounded much more domestic than George himself). His temper was still awfully impetuous but his physical features started to resemble that of the handsome protagonist of a sentimentalist novel, the only difference being that these protagonists were usually peaky and sorrowful young scholars.

Yes, maybe it was from that autumn evening on that she started to find it difficult to stare directly at his naked body. Their bedroom was then always filled with an embarrassing silence. She did wish she could get one of the naughty books the girls in the town had talked about.

It was hard to tell who took the lead after she made the first move.

“I simply believe myself to be sterile.” Evie told Jacob one day when they were nineteen years old. To her surprise, Jacob blushed and looked aside. “It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he said ambiguously, not willing to confirm whether on earth it was good or bad. Many years later, he received a letter from Evie in India, “No offspring after five years. Henry has taken me to doctors (English ones or Indian ones? After all, the English would only tell you it was due to ‘temperament, soil, water and weather’, Jacob thought). No solution found”. He didn’t feel relieved, but rather at a loss. Thinking back of their youth when they had always lived under the shadow of fear, he couldn’t help but ache for the both of them. “It’s not that I care what others might say,” she told him once, “I’m just being pragmatic.” Was she trying to be strong for the both of them? His dear sister.

Evie was dragged back to the reality by the sensations from within her body. Jacob’s face was half-buried in the shadows, the intermittent flash outside the windows appearing and disappearing in rapid succession. She reached out one hand instinctively trying to touch him, finally holding tight onto his sweaty back. In moments like this she could feel a sudden urge to say “I love you” to her brother, but it was not the “I love you” when kissing him goodnight, nor the “I love you” when she saw him back from a mission that could have cost his life. She panicked for this thought for no reason, unsure whether Jacob was feeling the same.

Jacob suddenly tightened his fingers in her hair, his movement quickened and her face was pressed tightly against his chest. “I love you,” he said, kissing her on the lips.

She felt like the female protagonist of a sentimentalist novel. But of course, a plot like this was more likely to be that of naughty literature.


	5. Somewhere else

Jacob was totally awestruck when he first saw the Three Star Line poster on the wall in Evie’s wagon. “New York-Quebec-Casablanca-Cairo-Cape Town-Bombay”, each name shining like an appealing mystery in those eighteenth-century exotic adventure novels. If he had been born two centuries earlier, would he become a great pirate, like Edward Kenway? He tried to imagine himself with one leg and one eyeball missing, but wasn’t not sure if Evie would like that. What the hell, why would he care whether Evie would like it or not?

“Would you find me attractive with one leg and one eyeball missing?” Eventually he couldn’t resist the temptation of asking Evie that question, who was sitting in the middle of a heap of books and documents, distressed and grumpy, shooting him an impatient look. Not that he’d be interested in knowing why.

“No.”

“And what if I was a pirate?”

Evie gave it a thought. “Maybe.”

When they were in Crawley, Evie would sometimes bring him all kinds of strange books, mainly penny dreadful – The Monk by Matthew George Lewis, Mysteries of London and The String of Pearls (which was his favorite). After settling down in London, Jacob still would wonder whether there was indeed a serial killer like Resurrection Man or a barber that made pies out of the flesh of his victims.

Of course, Father wouldn’t have allowed him to read grotesque stories like those. Evie never told him where she got these books from and Jacob suspected that she wasn’t sharing her entire collection with him either – otherwise he couldn’t explain why she possessed such extensive knowledge in some particular field (though Evie seemed to be an expert in all fields). He had read some of her German sentimentalist novels and was amused to see how the protagonists would fall ill in some paradisiacal island in Greece longing for their lover back in hometown (would it be that hard to steal a carriage and go back home? Ridiculous). But what Greece was like?

Father had never told them about his life in India. When they were fifteen years old, an Indian assassin came to knock their door one night but left alone before anyone answered, then cut his own throat in front of all of them after Father and George cornered him in the street. Ghastly, Father and George dealt with his corpse, but didn’t tell the twins anything.

“What’s that all about?” Jacob asked Evie later at home when they were alone, as he knew sometimes she’d spy on Father and George outside the study. Evie gave him a look and shook her head grimly, without saying a word. His mind nonetheless went to a remote place, where there were white palaces underneath a dazzling tropical sun, running fountain water in the muggy air, women with dark brown skin and heavy gold jewelry, the faint sound of the prayers from the distance. He felt like a sailor floating on the infinite silent ocean, waiting for an exotic city to appear on the misty horizon. He would never go back to Crawley.

“Have you ever thought about going to India?” He asked Evie. Father had left home in the middle of the night, maybe in a rush to report this urgent incident to the Council. “Why would I go to India?” she was lying next to him, asking him in an absent-minded tone. “I don’t know, just to get out of here.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Jacob,” she said, “sometimes you sound like an idiot,” then propped herself up on her elbows, pressing a kiss onto his forehead. She had unbraided her hair, a flush on her freckled cheeks, her eyes shimmering under the candle light, like a portrait of Rembrandt. Jacob turned over to kiss her on her lips, her arms wrapping around his neck, her body warm like a little deer he had once held in his hands.

Evie seemed more patient than him, but Jacob was certain that she felt the same urge of escaping from Crawley. Many years later, he still remembered that sunny afternoon when they were seventeen years old, when they went to the meadow on the hill near the village on a pick nick, eating pickled eggs, ham and fresh bread. Evie was reading a book of poetry, he was lying on the grass with his head on her lap, weaving some flowers into a garland, flax, larkspur, corn poppies and daisies, red and white, the air filled with fragrance and fluttering petals. She leaned down to kiss him, her long hair falling to his face, making him sneeze. She giggled, pressing another kiss on his cheek. “When can we get out of here?” He asked. “I don’t know, Jacob,” she said, a rarely soft and patient tone (Jacob wondered if Mother would talk like that), “it’s not the right time yet,” placing a flower alongside his ear, starting to giggle again.

He missed the Evie back then. He missed the both of them back then, before they left Crawley and their adolescence behind, the cage they both longed to escape from. Sometimes he wondered, if they hadn’t come to London and taken on the duties that they had to take on, would they still be together?


	6. Choice

Jacob liked Ned Wynert, not only because he was American (the bash and straightforward way of making demands and the extremely direct and efficient methods; the British seemed to lack both). He was curious about Ned’s previous life. Evie might keep her curiosity at bay but Jacob wasn’t his sister.

“Same life as yours,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and swigging his beer. Was this a joke? A prostitute was flirting with her client in the background, her rancuous laughter spilling over the crowded pub. “Getting up, eating, shitting, going back to bed, witnessing your own parents’ adultery. Reading too many god damned books and getting hit if you’re not obedient. The only thing different might be eating pressed duck every fucking Sunday. Jesus, you really should see what they've done to that poor duck.”

“And what do they do?”

Ned paused for a while. “Let’s say you wouldn’t want your body to be dealt with that way.”

He said his “old money” family in New York's Upper East Side was just a joke among the local upper-class society. Father was a degenerate swindler who gained his fortune by stock frauds, mother said to be of Indian descent, which was a total disgrace according to the polite society.  “Future?” Ned thought for a while, “I don’t know, being sent to London for social seasons to find some English noble man who’s running out of his inheritance, getting married for his title in exchange of my father’s money.”  “Sounds like the cattle market of our town.” Jacob said. Ned burst into laughter, “Exactly.”

Apparently he found his career as a jewelry thief, money laundering and smuggling criminal much more attractive (Jacob didn’t tell him that he was indeed his father’s son).

“So we have a deal?”

People would always say something they shouldn’t after closing a deal. But he didn’t care either.

“Why isn’t your sister here today?”

“Eh she’s not feeling well.” Ned lifted one eyebrow. “Ok, we’re kind of in a sulk.” He could be a terrible liar when it came to Evie.

“Oh, siblings,” Ned laughed, “just a bunch of bastards trying to steal your share of inheritance.”

“Well I can only say that she can be really…unamiable sometimes.”

“How? There’s nothing to compete for between you two. Or do you mean you’re like a quarreling couple?”

Jacob paused for a moment. Maybe Ned was indeed unable to understand the sibling relationship in an ordinary (really?) family like his. He also doubted that Ned had much romantic experience (“Your sister’s kinda cute,” he said once, and Evie laughed at Jacob’s bad American accent when he told her that. Jacob had even pondered whether Ned was interested in men or women).

“You’re right. We’re just squabbling over the most...trivial stuff.” It was better not to tell him what exactly they had been up to or what kind of relationship they had.

“Don’t you think Ned is very brave?” Evie asked him one night when they were both sitting in front of the fireplace in her wagon, enjoying a calm and warm night in, a novel of George Eliot in her hands. “Normal women’s life (is she admitting she’s just abnormal? Jacob thought) was all about dullness, boredom and domestic drudgery. Beef pie, sugar or milk in the tea, Persian rugs or Indian ones, children who broke their arm, gambling husband who never comes home. At least Ned doesn’t have to endure these infernal inflictions.”

Would Evie one day be living this pathetic life as well? It was hard for him to imagine her in bridal dress or changing nappy for a baby. The Evie he knew was a strong and proficient master assassin, with nerves of steel and an unbreakable determination (who was also insistently and annoyingly showing off her intellectual superiority), though she was making efforts in a wrong direction. But anyway, it’s better not to think about their disagreement right now.

Evie seemed to have known his thinking. “If only one day, women are no longer obliged to choose between this life,” she raised the book in her hand, “and the ours.”

“Are you regretting having inherited Father’s mantle?”

“No,” Evie paused briefly, “I’m only constantly worried about you.”

He felt the same. He was touched by her words, but couldn’t say anything. Sometimes when he was wounded and hidden in a haystack with pursuers roaring outside, he couldn’t help thinking of the last time when he saw her, which could indeed be the last time, in a literal sense. However, making some sentimental gesture right now would be too clichéd, wouldn’t it? Before he could react, she leaned in and held his hand.

“Don’t die.”

Jacob thought that this might be the most implicit love declaration he had ever heard, though coming from his sister, it felt a bit strange. But their life had always been a bit strange, hadn’t it?


	7. Blueberries

“This time you made a different sort of sounds.”

“What?”

“Normally it’s short and sharp, but today it sounded like a crescendo.”

He had even managed to pronounce that word correctly. Jacob seemed keen on observing her, as though she was some rare animal. He suddenly leaned down and pressed a kiss on her bare chest.

“You’ve got quite a good mood today,” he grinned, “almost begging me to savour where you normally wouldn’t even allow me to touch.”

“Now can you leave?”

“It’s a bit too fast to turn your back on me again after all that I’ve done for you this morning, don’t you think?”

Evie gave him a kiss to silence him.

“Get out, Agnes will be here soon.”

“Pearl Attaway is far more kind than you.”

“Plus she is not your sister. Are you leaving or not?”

Evie jumped off the bed and started to put on her white chemise, her bare legs trembling slightly in the chill morning air. She turned around and saw that observing look on Jacob’s face again.

“You’re beautiful.”

Oh. That wasn’t something he’d say every day, let alone without that sardonic tone. The memory of him leaving her alone rather sulkily that day near the monument in London City came to her mind again, making her almost smile (she always had the urge to smile whenever she saw him “being cute”, like when seeing a cat circling around chasing its own tail).

“I know why you’re saying this.”

“Enlighten me.”

“If I did you’d certainly feel offended.” Sometimes he could be really slow in understanding certain things.

“Now you’ve elicited my curiosity. I know my sister dearest has always seen herself as someone fairly observant.” Here he went again.

“Because you’re jealous.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jacob sat up in an instant.

The mission with Henry was more than satisfactory, whose result had even led her to a key item located at St Paul’s Cathedral. If only the necklace wasn’t taken away by the god damned Lucy Thorne who appeared from thin air. She didn’t know what exactly Jacob had been up to, but she had to admit that to undermine Starrick’s power they had to ally with other apparently suspicious individuals. She was simply worried that Jacob was not able to deal with Pearl Attaway – on different levels.

“What did you mean by the comments about Henry the other day?”

“You have admitted it yourself.” He was still resisting.

“Father’s words don’t have to have any innuendo.”

“Allow me to dissent.”

Evie climbed onto the bed and straddled him again, giving him a deep kiss.

“I think I might remind you that technically this is called bribery.” His hands slided down her soft waist, his voice hoarse, breath heavy and hot against her chest.

“Last time I checked, my brother isn’t someone particularly incorruptible. As long as you can forget about this whole subject.”

“I’m afraid your action is counterproductive. Now every time you climb over me, I’d think about Greenie.”

Evie paused for a moment. “So you don’t mind telling me more about Pearl Attaway either?”

“Well, she is…”

His voice was smothered by another fierce kiss.

Evie sometimes (most of the time, in fact) felt that Jacob was still a child, naïve, inexperienced and easy to impress. She had never met Pearl Attaway personally herself, but could vaguely imagine Jacob’s certain sense of inferiority in front of that woman. An immature boy before an experienced woman would always have that sort of psychology, striving to prove himself to her while unable to get rid of a certain complex of inferiority. Of course, not that she'd directly tell him that.

It was just like he had always had this terrible obsession with proving himself to her and to Father. She couldn’t exactly recall when did he start trying to attract her and Father’s attention in all sorts of unexpected ways – the difficult naughtiness as a boy and the biting, inappropriate humor as an adult (she wasn’t sure whether he really qualified as an adult), and the caprice of starting a whole gang – god, why did he never tell her that he’d want to be a gang leader?

He was always slower than her in many ways when they were children. After they started the life with Father, while Jacob demonstrated the potential and interest that an outstanding assassin ought to possess in terms of physical performance, Father had a hard time working on his son’s intellectual progress and the capacity to focus his attention. Evie was undoubtedly Father’s alliance in this interminable struggle – with a schadenfreude kind of relish and a sense of certain authority, as if their mother’s absence required her to act in her place. For many years, Evie had the impression that Jacob was the only vulnerable one within the household, though apparently he was the hardest one to tame and the only author of countless drama.

“I want sugared blueberries.”

He stood stubbornly like a rock in front of a sweets shop in the market when they were nine, refusing to leave no matter how much she insisted that Father wouldn’t allow them to spend money on this sort of things.

“I don’t care what Father says,” he said, “I want you to buy those berries for me.”

It was many years later that she finally came to understand what he meant. A faint, vague yet genuine supplication from the bottom of a little boy’s heart. Love me, listen to me, satisfy my needs and desires. I can obey Father because that is my obligation, but I want you to listen to me, satisfy me, spoil me, because you’re my sister, and I trust you.

It wasn’t like Jacob would ever say it out loud to her. Finally she went furious that day, leaving him alone in the market before going home alone with their weekly household shopping. He didn’t come home until late that night, avoiding speaking to her for the next few days. How could he be such an unreasonable child? She didn’t bother to seek a reconciliation either. Maybe that’s how they started the usual silent cold war between them that they frequently found themselves in these days. Of course she couldn’t understand him, she was a child herself too. But could she understand him now?

Even in those most intimate moments when their bodies reached the limit of closeness that two human beings could possibly attain, his deepest thoughts and needs still remained a mystery to her. Her kiss fell to the corner of his mouth, where it tasted like salty sea water.

“Tell me one thing and I can satisfy you,” she whispered to his ear. Panting heavily, his fingers caressing her sweaty back, he didn’t reply anything.

If he wanted her to accept his behavior, to accept their differences, would she be able to do that? This fleeting thought vaguely crossed her mind before disappearing.


	8. A Child

Jacob didn’t remember whether Evie was particularly fond of children, but as long as he could recall, Evie was already acting like an adult when they were both children themselves. People who had never had childhood might be especially nostalgic about those years, he thought.

“The situation in Lambeth wasn’t optimal following Elliotson’s assassination.” She told him with that familiar reproaching tone. “Counterfeits flooded the market. If it wasn’t for me acting in time and Miss Nightingale’s help, Clara wouldn’t be alive now.”

“Well done.” He didn’t know what else to say.

Evie shot him a complicated look. “If it was you who took care of Clara, I’m sure your attitude would be different.”

What would it be like to take care of a child? He had never thought about it before, probably because Evie had always treated him as if he was a kid who'd never grow up. On one hand, he couldn’t but feel offended by this stand (“He’d do nothing but waste his time when he’s off, so it’s better to take advantage of his time at home”, she once told Father with a casual air in front of Jacob, the pragmatism and the parental tone in her words even surprising himself), on the other hand, he could occasionally enjoy the privilege of being a child. He had a severe fever in Father’s absence when they were sixteen years old, Evie staying in front of his bed for a whole night, keeping a cold cloth on his forehead. He fell asleep in a daze in the small hours of the morning, and Evie seemed to have been out, bringing him a bowl of hot fresh milk when he woke up.

“Thank goodness, at last you were quiet for a while,” she said gently, as if blaming him, but stroked his hair with an affectionate tenderness, then kissed his forehead. He reached out one hand instinctively to grab the hem of her shirt, as she took his hand, hushing him quietly, humming an unknown yet familiar song in a soft voice.

“I want baked chestnut.”

“How can there be chestnuts in summer, little fool?”

Her voice tender, her hug warm and soft, he could swear that in that instant he smelt the sweet aroma of chestnut in her hair.

He had never told her that Attaway was a Templar. He was already a naïve and credulous enough in her eyes, wouldn’t that further reinforce this image? It was rather Greenie’s fault, he thought glumly. How could he not know that this woman was enemy instead of alliance? If Greenie had done his job, he wouldn’t make a fool out of himself. Anyway, she had lost that so-called important necklace herself too. Once others had made a mistake, your own error could be easier to dismiss. Apparently Evie didn’t share his point of view.

“Do you know what is your problem?” On a summer evening, they were drinking beer on the roof of the train, Evie had brought his favorite cheese from a delicatessen nearby, “you never ponder the consequences of your actions.”

Like the Lambeth patients after Elliotson’s assassination, the London transport system after eliminating Pearl Attaway, the British economy following Twopenny’s brutal death right in the middle of Bank of England (she could also count the cows that he had frightened accidentally while looking for berries in a hedge bush when he was eight, he thought), and every time she had to clean up after his mess. Or like the fish he tried to catch using an explosive in a stream when he was seven, a sharp stone projecting into the air, cutting his eyebrow open. He came home crying, eyebrow bleeding heavily, only to find Father ordering him to stand alone outside the house without food until midnight as punishment. It was Evie who came down later in the dark, bringing him the leftover ham and bread from the dinner.

“Don’t cry,” she said softly, “you can come in in half an hour.”

Evie was more like a mother, a sister, or a woman? It was hard for him to tell. After the puberty began, she became even more mysterious in his eyes. They had never left each other since the very first moment of their existence, but it seemed that he could never thoroughly understand her. Sometimes she was close and tender, sometimes she distanced herself intentionally by being authoritative and intransigent, sometimes she made him realize how different they were and only want to escape from her. It was also her who opened his eyes to the world of fantasies and desire, who made him understand what the word family meant, a figure of the mother he never had, the company he desperately needed as a person, a kiss on his forehead and a hug when no words needed to be spoken.

His own existence must be much simpler for her; no doubt, she would say he was just a child who needed attention and control. Had it ever occurred to her, that just as he needed her to deal with the consequences of his actions, she had also this innate need of taking care of him, even in the worst sort of way?

He was the rule breaker, and she reestablished the order. He never pondered the consequences, and she planned everything beforehand. There was a dark tendency to chaos in his nature, and she was the only one that could save him from the abyss of complete disorder. They were the primitive dichotomy, the primal impulse and satisfaction, the intrinsic other side of each other’s body and soul.

“Can’t you just be the one who takes care of the consequences?” He said.

“Jacob,” she said with that serious tone. “You have to be responsible for yourself. What if one day I’m no longer here?”

He threw a look immediately in her direction. “Why wouldn’t you be here?”

Evie didn’t reply, only reaching out and taking hold of his hand.

 


	9. Fairy Tales

Evie didn’t like surprises (in other words, she didn’t like surprises from Jacob), but she herself could often surprise him. When they were fourteen years old, one morning, Evie sent him to the market for some household shopping. Thyme, rosemary, laurel leaves and red wine vinegar? He had never figured out what they were or what they were used for, standing awkwardly in front of the stalls as owners glanced at the shopping list and stuffed some strange herbs and jars into his hands with an impatient air of the grown-ups. Evie stayed in the kitchen for a whole day, only coming out in the evening with a full pot of exquisite beef stew. Garlics and herbs dissolved in the delicious sauce, the bright, glimmering red fat speckled with chopped fresh parsley, a tantalizing treat totally different from the bland English daily diet.

“Whatever stew it is, as long as you have good wine, garlics, provençal herbs, fresh tomatoes and a little wine vinegar, the outcome won’t be disappointing,” she told Father at the dinner table. Father was clearly delighted, “and broth.” Father said, “Have you tried adding carrot and celery to your stock?”

Jacob was wolfing down his own dish without even looking at them or saying a word, clearly vexed and jealous of the closeness between father and daughter. Evie and Father was anything but domestic, yet they kept ranting on and on about cooking as if they had become fellow members of a conspiracy against him. It was simply unforgivable.

It wasn’t that Evie was especially fond of daily drudgery. One day after they came to London, Jacob saw her sitting on the street casually, stuffing a cured sausage sandwich into her mouth in a quite ungraceful manner. “Street food,” she caught sight of his surprised look and explained, “People’s favorite”, sounding like a young lady from a noble wealthy family who experienced the life of common people for the first time (though he couldn’t imagine her as a lady).

But he was still surprised again when he came back to the train one day and found her smoking in front of her fireplace. He had no idea when his disciplined sister had learned how to smoke.

"Did you get it back?"

"Yes."

Jacob liked moments like this, when Evie had achieved her goal (how typical of her!) and her high spirits undoubtedly had made life easier for the both of them. She was used to putting too much pressure on herself (and on the people around her) as a hopeless perfectionist (while he always absolved himself of all responsibility with all sorts of excuses) and he knew how frustrated and furious she was after losing that necklace, not so much with Lucy Thorn as with herself. The way she smoked had an enchanting beauty and elegance to it that left him transfixed; unlike the contrived posture of a young aristocrat, her moves were brief, sharp and fluid, as though unsheathing her kukri and severing the spine of a Templar in a combat, her eyes staring into the space with an absent-minded expression, as if she was frowning, but he knew how content she was. He sat on the armrest of her chair, giving her a kiss on her forehead. Evie took the cigarette away from her mouth, exhaled the smoke and handed it to him idly.

“Do you know some people claimed that they’ve seen a headless Anne Boleyn walking around the London Tower?” She said after a long silence.

"Who’s that?"

"A woman killed by her husband who happened to be the king of England."

"I know you believe it’s true." Jacob blew a perfect smoke ring.

Evie started laughing.

"Don’t tell me you were scared today."

"I was, as a matter of fact."

"Oh Evie," Jacob drawled, spreading his arms to hug her and pressing another kiss to her cheek. She rested her head in the crook of his neck, her voice faint. “I feel like the tailor who stole the treasure from the giants,” then lifting her head to look into his eyes, “Do you fancy a dance on the roof of the train?”

She had even told Dickens that she believed in dwarves and ghosts. Jacob remembered Grandmother reading Grimms’ fairy tales to them before bed, Evie hugging him in her arms, her soft hair falling to his face, the both of them curled up under the warm covers, the light of fire in the room reminding him of the witch’s stove in Hansel and Gretel. Why sisters were always smarter?

"What if we are caught by the witch?” He asked Evie, who kissed his forehead and replied with a certain tone of a little adult, “Grandmother wouldn’t leave us alone in the woods.”

Jacob wasn’t sure about that, but if he ever found a house made of sweets, he’d be the first one to swoop down to it. “I know,” Evie giggled, kissing his cheeks again, “I bet the witch would certainly have your favorite ginger biscuit.” He heard her indulgent tone, somehow cheered up.

“And why would the fairies make shoes for the old shoe maker?” Evie asked Grandmother. “The poor will always be saved.” Grandmother said. Was it from that moment on that Evie bestowed upon herself the duty of a savior? Maybe that was why she believed in the fairies and the ghosts. The most primitive division of good and evil, light and dark, water and fire, freedom and oppression. A determined fighter could always divide the world into two opposing camps with the belief that he was the only one who represented the justice, because otherwise he would never be able to take away so many lives with steady and unruffled hands.

But was the world black and white, or an ambiguous gray?

They never talked about it, as if it was a tacit agreement.


	10. Arcadia

“Why the richest people are always the greediest ones too?”

After the whole farce of Twopenny and the Bank of England ended, Jacob murmured to no one in particular, clearly not convinced, as if blaming Twopenny would spare him from Evie’s reproach. Evie gave him a look (apparently still angry, but she would never let go any chance of correcting him) and said: “They’re not greedy because they’re rich; their greediness was what made them rich in the first place.”

He had to admit that she was right (Evie was always right. Maybe that’s the reason why he was always wrong? Not because he was naturally wrong but because he just wanted to disagree with her. Perhaps Evie could have that figured out too, in the same way she figured out the nature of the rich).

After a moment of hesitation, she finally asked him that question. “Why do you never repent your behavior?”

What a good question. Why?

He actually did try to find out the answer. To know the present you must first know the past, like they said. But where was his past?

For some strange reason, he remembered the time when Father brought them a piece of cheese and he ate the most part of it one night on his own. As Father’s punishment, he stood in the yard for a whole afternoon, listening to Evie upstairs reciting some obscure passage of Odyssey, her voice echoing in the empty and silent backyard filled with autumn sunshine. They would never be able to go back to afternoons like that again. Odysseus had at least a home to go back to after ten years of warfare; his own past was like a ghost, an abstract idea of the lost Arcadia.

Repenting his actions meant showing his own vulnerability and resignation. But when did it start? Was that because he blamed her for his conflict with Father, considering her as his accomplice? It was so hard to be close to them (had he ever wanted to understand them or be understood?). All those frictions with them in daily life during all these years, trivial or significant alike, had already wore out his willingness to recall the details, leaving him only with a vague, lingering impression of all his discontent; it was precisely those conflicts with his closest ones that had shaped him, turning him into the person he was now.

It wasn’t that Evie had ever tried to be cooperative either. She got once even furious at Henry, for he caused her to lose the plan of Buckingham Palace. Jacob suspected that it wasn’t so much about the map as about her own ineptitude of dealing with unexpected situations, in other words, anything that was out of her plan. However, blaming her own flaws seemed much more difficult than the other way round (Sure, it wasn’t necessarily his fault that things went wrong; it was her obsession with having everything under control. But try bringing that up to her?). Personally (though he already knew that Evie would pretty much give a damn about everything he “personally” believed) he thought that Evie needed to work on her obsessive-compulsive tendency and her perfectionism, just as he needed to overcome his own sense of insecurity. Jacob felt that at first Evie didn’t understand what he meant by “sense of insecurity” (“You lack of sense of security?” Her reaction was as if he told her a joke. The worst reaction he’d ever imagined).

What he didn’t know, was that the only weakness of Evie, if there was any, was when he finally put down his guard and revealed his vulnerable self to her. Sometimes when they were making love, he’d say, almost unconsciously, “Hug me, E.”, without his typical cynical sarcasm, a mask that usually restrained him from expressing his true feelings. She’d hold him in her arms immediately, as if hit by an electrical current, realizing how much he needed her, a fact often overshadowed by their conflict and disagreement. “I love you,” he would say sometimes. Evie supposed that it was how he said “I need you”, a childish announcement. Maybe he had never grown up. Was love always a need? Could you possibly love someone without needing him?

He yearned for her understanding, but she judged him constantly against the strictest standards, as if his whole being was a heresy, a deviation. Her almost insistent deny of his way of being was so ingrained in his existence, to the point that if she wasn’t criticizing him the way she did, he’d feel like some part of him went missing. If he wasn’t being impetuous and reckless, if she wasn’t scolding and correcting him, he wouldn’t be who he was, a child who needed her so desperately.

Would he one day stop relying on her and take full responsibility for all his actions? Maybe this day would never come, and he would never be complete without her. In the same way, could she overcome her flaws and become easier to be around? A tenderer, softer one that she used to be, the one who held him in her arms listening to Grandmother's bedtime stories?

He didn’t think they could do that, not yet. Their attachment was like a drunken stumble, two people drowning in agony trying to get closer to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok depending on the sequence you're currently playing you get either the impression that "they definitely can't live without each other" or "nah they're just not compatible and will drift apart anyway" lol  
> I wrote this chapter after playing the part of the game where Evie tidied up the mess Jacob had left at the Bank of England and the failure of Evie's plan to procure the Buckingham palace map. What I like about this part is how Evie went mad at Henry who she was supposed to be in love with. I like it because she's no longer the typical pleasing and sympathetic female character in many fictions; she got pissed when she had the reason to be so and her personality is so well developed that her reaction seems very grounded to me. So basically I feel like fryecest is so fascinating because this is a dynamic between two equally complex individuals and writing about them is writing about each one of them first.  
> 


	11. Dream

Old people always held a blindly optimistic attitude towards almost everything, as if they had finally come to enjoy the bitter reality after a lifelong refusal and resignation. You couldn’t laugh at something if you didn’t accept it in the first place, could you? Anyway, that was why Jacob preferred to stay away from them, as he would from teenagers (if he met with his younger self, he’d probably want to kill him – a highly improbable hypothetic situation that eventually came true later with Emmett). But Mrs. Disraeli was an exception.

“Oh look at those two!” She exclaimed in the Devil’s Acre like a little girl who saw marshmallow for the first time. It seemed that once people reached a certain age, they’d slowly start turning back into children again, both physically and mentally, becoming more and more vulnerable and dependent, the only difference being that one feared for death and another feared for life. Just as he couldn’t tell a child “I’m a gang leader and often kill people in broad daylight on a whim” (well he didn’t need to as he just did it in front of them), he wouldn’t want to tell an old person “do you still remember old Phil? He’s ill now and the doctor said he doesn’t have many days left”. It was as hard to be alive as to cease to be so.

“Well…they’re…eh…” At least he was sensible enough to not tell her that he often did similar things with his own sister. But what the hell was that embarrassment? It must be because he didn’t consider her equal to himself, but a child to dismiss perfunctorily (or because he'd still got some shame?). Why couldn’t people just be frank with children? Eventually they’d find out about the truth of the world anyway.

“Oh Mr. Frye, I’ve been married twice and I’m perfectly aware what they are doing. God bless them!” She let out a joyful giggle, as if having seen a skylark during a day trip to the countryside. Was it because life had been kind to her? You couldn’t be kind if you’d never been treated kindly (did that mean that a Blighter wasn’t born a Blighter but made one?). A drunken man on the ground with his face in the mud was murmuring something indistinct, which certainly wouldn’t be as good-natured as “god bless you”. Life was always easier for the most fortunate ones, and harsher for the less blessed. Wasn’t particularly fair, was it?

“Do you think it’s our fault?” Evie’s voice sounded like whisper in the empty dark train. It was four o’clock in the morning when Jacob suddenly woke up, Evie breathing heavily beside him, her chest rising up and down like a helpless child in fever. He held her hand.

“What did you dream of?” His broke the silence, voice hoarse.

“Nothing.”

He kissed her gently, as if fearing to break her. Her tears suddenly came rushing down, as he held her in his arms, giving her a long kiss on her cheek drenched by the tears.

“You can’t carry the misery of the whole world on your own shoulders.” He said, as if having known already what she had dreamt of.

“No, I can’t, but I am part of the world, a detestable roaring machine that produces constant and massive suffering. You and me, and any other living human being, are bound to bear this pain until the end of our lives.” Evie fell silent for a moment. “Are we creating more violence and death, or saving the others from its claws?”

He didn’t remember Evie being so philanthropic – maybe she could share some of his suffering of not being understood and accepted by his own sister? Ethical reflection wasn’t particularly his strong suit either. He vaguely remembered though that someone had said that the end justified the means. Was it Machiavelli? “His thoughts not only reflected the political reality of his time, but also deeply influenced the posterity.” Father’s voice echoed in the afternoon’s study, Evie sitting on the floor, watching him quietly, Jacob leaned against the doorframe, bored and unheeding, impatient for Father’s permission to leave. He didn’t remember what was said afterwards; he’d probably left at that moment.

“It’s not that the end justifies the means,” Evie told him later, as if explaining why the moon was sometimes round and sometimes crescent to a five years old, “But that the acquisition and the maintenance of power require means that are not necessarily virtuous.” What was the difference anyway? As if the power was a bad thing. Were they legitimate as assassins? Was the legitimacy solely defined by power? What would be the ultimate difference between the Assassins and the Templars, if there was any, as the means of both camps were identical? The assassins cared for people, apparently. But were the Templars evil by nature?

Jacob abandoned his philosophical endeavor at this point. If all the problems could be resolved by a blade, the world wouldn’t be such an alienating machine, and he wouldn’t be forced to lie to children, wasn't it? Many years later, when Emmett asked him some questions that he couldn’t answer to, he’d think of the last words of John Elliotson and Evie's golden profile illuminated by the afternoon sunshine in Father’s study.

“These thoughts are the reason of angst; just don’t think about them and everything would be easier.” he said quietly to Evie, who seemed to have fallen asleep again. Her tears were still wet on her cheek, glittering under the dim moonlight.

He wouldn’t think about these questions when he was slaughtering. He felt like an animal, dominated and driven by an unknown power. Just as he would lift the sharp blade in his hand that would take away a life in the blink of an eye when dominated by that familiar bloodthirsty impulse, he had always acted upon his desire for his own sister since the first time he realized its existence. “What's between us doesn't need any justification,” he told himself. The strength of their conviction had always spared them from the sense of guilt. But had they felt guilty for killing?

He watched her sleeping face, refusing to keep thinking.


	12. Freedom

Jacob liked when Roth said “taking away our freedom, is taking away our humanity”. When he kidnapped the driver at the train station, it didn’t cross his mind what Roth would do with that poor soul afterwards, nor had he pondered what difference there was between him and the criminal mastermind in terms of coercing other people into serving their own interests. “For the greater good,” he heard someone say. It must be Evie. Was Starrick convinced of the same?

But it wasn’t that Jacob was interested in the three ironies. Maybe there was a fundamental contradiction between the end and the means and it wasn’t their fault that the reality of this world was completely at odds with the ideal one. The heaviest irony, was the expectation of achieving a heavenly goal through earthly means. The human being was condemned to the faint hope of his own free will, to the countless attempts at constructing the impossible Babel tower, and to fail over and over again, till the end of his tragic existence.

He didn’t tell Evie that Roth reminded him of Father at some point. It wasn’t the physique (thank god), but the conviction of their own deeds, the unbreakable determination to act upon their own principles, the only difference being that Father’s principles contradicted Jacob’s own, while Roth accepted and embraced them. Father and Evie were the annoying “Voice of Reason”, constraining his thoughts and conducts with the Creed and with their own belief. Most importantly, they never gave him the recognition that he deserved. Maybe Evie did love him, but it was an unconditional sisterly love, without necessarily the approval of his methods (“I love you, Jacob, but if you could put your dirty clothes into the basket downstairs it would be better” or “I love you, Jacob, even though you’re a horrible assassin.” He imagined his sister say. Not completely impossible). Maybe her love was like the love for her favorite cute little dog, like the kiss she pressed on his cheeks when handing him ginger biscuits when they were children. A condescending love. Any love without the understanding and the acceptance of the other only proved one’s own arrogance.

This bitter thought crossed his mind for the first time when he met with Roth and he soon came to understand why. Roth was the one who could understand his courage and aptitude, who shared the same anxiety and appetite for attention and appraisal (a gang and a theatre; who would have thought of that?). On the contrary, Evie was just some shackles that he longed to escape from. The conflictive and distant aspect of their relationship won out; once savoured the freedom of being finally understood, who would be willing to go back into that cage again?

Evie suddenly paused, looking down at him, her eyes glimmering in the weak light from the window like a quiet cat near her prey. He somehow flustered, evading her eyes, as if fearing that she would see him through.

“What?” Taking the initiative would make him sound less suspicious.

“Nothing,” she said, leaning down to kiss his neck, then abruptly bit on him, making him gasp. It was as if she was taking a revenge on him. He grabbed her waist and thrusted hard upward, enjoying the shudder from the depths of her body and the moan from her throat that she could barely contain. He was definitely taking revenge on her.

“Are you sure you haven’t talked to Maxwell Roth again?”

Evie was sitting on the edge of her bed with her legs crossed, lightening the oil lamp, her disheveled long hair falling on her pale bare shoulder, watching him with that vigilant look that irritated him more than ever as of late. It was definitely not an appropriate occasion to quarrel; it could only go from bad to worse.

“No, I have never been to see him.” He said with a curt, cold tone, put his shirt on and left her wagon, shutting the door close behind him. Would she understand that he needed to be listened to as well?

Long time after the whole episode with Roth ended, Jacob still thought of the time when Roth took him to an opium den in east London. The smoky dark hall seemed like a devil’s cave, the intense stifling smell of incense and opium filling his nostrils and wiping out his consciousness. They stayed there until four o’clock in the morning, right before the dawn arrived. Jacob climbed to the top of a boat’s mast in a daze, shouting across the silent and empty Thames, then bursting into laughter in a fit of madness. Was this freedom? When he finally left the suffocating cage of his family, he became free, didn’t he? Getting rid of the all the prejudices, creating a new life in a new world. No one knew him, no one labeled him; he was the one who decided who he was with his own deeds. The last person on the earth he’d like to think of at this moment was Evie, yet she still appeared annoyingly in his mind. God damn it. Roth was stumbling around somewhere underneath him, laughing out loud. He leapt from the mast, diving into the muddy and icy-cold freedom.

 


	13. The Answer

If Evie had to choose a word to describe Jacob, “cynical” might not be the right one. Maybe he’d indeed got a morbid sarcasm, but she didn't think that he would believe the world to be beyond salvation. Otherwise, why would he make any effort at all? They’d need a reason for their endeavors anyway.

Jacob wasn’t sure about that himself. “This world really tires me, with all its problems,” he told Freddy once in a pub over two pints, who seemed to be heavy-hearted on that particular day; maybe he had been thinking about his deceased wife. Jacob didn’t know what would it be like to have a normal life – he did have his loved one, but he doubted that he led a normal life. It seemed to him that they had to abandon one part of themselves in favor of a higher and greater cause and become an abstract symbol or label (“Justice” “Freedom” etc.), a faceless machine that was not allowed to have emotions or enjoy the personal freedom that he longed for (this word had really become his favorite since he started his activities with Roth). What’s worse, he wasn’t even entirely sure about his own reason of being. The objective of his actions in London, was more to put his principles into practice (but were they of his own devising or an inevitable result of Father and Evie’s lifelong influence?), or to satisfy his own desire to be validated and approved? As if satisfying one's own desires would give him any meaning.

Freddy groaned. “You know what’s most tiring?” He said, “That even though you know that life is devoid of any sense, you still have to keep going.”

Jacob thought for a while. The advantage of being an adult was the right and the capacity to act, the disadvantage being the loss of any transcendental meaning beyond those actions, on a personal level (Evie certainly wouldn’t approve; Jacob shouldn’t either, but having doubt and reservation about it was different). He had asked Freddy why he’d want to be a police officer (“Oh you know, the typical childhood dream, that sort of things.” He said dismissively, as if ashamed), as though the answer of other people could also answer his own question.

“Why does it seem to me that things are much simpler for you?” Jacob asked Evie one day. He was lying on her bed next to her, who had unbuttoned her shirt down to her chest in the summer heat, reading a commentary on Idealism and making an inattentive “uh” sound in response.

“What simpler?”

“Well,” Jacob turned over, propping himself up on his elbows. “You’re so convinced of what you believe and do not hesitate to act upon it.”

“Isn’t it the same for everyone?” Evie finally lifted her head, giving him a confused look. Without knowing what to say, Jacob leaned in to kiss the thin line between her collarbone and chest, as she swatted him over the head with her book, giggling. He took the book from her hand and tossed it to the ground, its hard cover hitting the ground with a thump. Her scent was tinged with a faint smell of sweat, reminiscent of gardenia and summer storm, her kisses and sounds as sweet and tender as the juice of Muscat grape. “Sometimes you remind me of a big white fish in the deep ocean.” He said once. Her body would also remind him of the sky before a storm, the powerful dark force of waves of pleasure lurking in her contracted muscles, ready to explode and release all its potential, a deadly breath-taking beauty that he was addicted to. Evie chuckled, kissing his bare shoulder. “You are really poetic sometimes, you know?” Yet she was the one who told him about "the little death”; “la petite mort”, she said once, with a playful tone. When they were trapped deep down in the bottom of the abyss of pleasure, Jacob would indeed think of death sometimes. That might be the closest moment to death – the conscious loss of consciousness, the ecstasy that connected him ephemerally to the eternity. “We’re sinners,” he said once, and Evie laughed as if it was a joke, though the effect it had on them was indeed humorous. They were each other’s ultimate redemption, as only they could ease the raging blind flame of each other’s desires in that sweet and sinful way. Neither leading a gang nor having an affair with his own sister seemed to help him much to reflect on his moral principles.

But when Roth shouted delightedly to his men, ordering them to destroy the workshop with children inside, in that instant, he still shuddered with disgust. When he remembered his own reaction after a long time – the shock, the rage and the revulsion, maybe also a hint of disappointment? -, it felt almost unreal. However, the lingering doubt that had always haunted him had at last vanished at that moment, giving him the relief that he was desperate for: he might be doubting his creed and was profoundly skeptical about all established rules in general, but deep down inside, he still held a belief. A belief that there were a distinction between right and wrong, boundaries and bottom lines. A belief that would bring him a basic sense of orientation in the totally chaotic and disordered void that Roth himself represented. Maybe that’s why people would believe in God? There was nothing easier than to believe that a superior being had already established a sacred order and an ultimate meaning for the human being, while there was nothing harder than to face the truth that the real world lacked of any sense or purpose per se and that all the meanings we had forged for it were merely an artificial fabrication. He wasn’t a brave man, even though he made his own laws (he was a brilliant gang strategist and a brilliant sinner too, after all) – not in the sense that he didn’t need any belief or lived in a chaotic primitive state as a complete outlaw.

It was like finally discovering one part of what he was and what he wanted to be.

It wasn’t until Evie was about to leave for India several months later that he briefly talked about Roth with her. With hindsight, that was when he and Evie were most distant from each other. After the whole theater incident, he had locked the bitterest part of this painful experience deep down in his heart as a purely personal memory, keeping it away from everyone, even from Evie. Was it because he had never forgiven her for what she said (“Father was right, he had never approved of your methods!”)? Yes, maybe she was indirectly responsible for his suffering, the suffering of a thirsty man near death in a desert who had finally found a fresh spring that had turned out to be poisonous, but he was the author of his own deeds that had brought a fatal consequence upon the innocents. He could never share that feeling of despair and guilt with any other human being. It was just a memory of his that would never die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I think one interesting thing about Jacob is that apparently he wasn't as convinced of the Creed as Evie; he might have spent much more time and energy on trying to find out what he believed and what he wanted. He knew it though, but in a vague and shallow way, in the beginning of the game. I mean yeah I could have written him as someone 100% convinced of his ideology BUT personally I want him to be more human, with all the messy confusion that a human being experiences constantly (I wrote about that part of Evie too in chapter XI). I think that the whole story with Roth and the relationship with his sister have finally given him an answer.


	14. Departure

“I’m hungry.”

“Want some roast chicken?”

“Where can you get it?”

“Aha,” Evie kissed his forehead, smiling, propping herself up and shouting in the door’s direction.

“Nigel?”

“Yes Miss Frye?” They heard the familiar voice of the short young lad.

“Could you please bring me some roast chicken from your favorite delicatessen in Whitechapel? You can take the money from our safe.”

“Yes of course!”

Jacob chuckled.

“Don’t worry, he’s only been on the train for ten minutes.” Evie said idly.

“I’m not worried.” Jacob said, leaning down to kiss her bare waist as she hadn’t slipped back into the covers, “I like here.”

“You like a lot of things.” At least that was true.

She turned over, pressed her chest against his and held his neck in her arms to kiss him, wrapping his waist with her legs. “Careful”, he said lazily, “you’re going to miss your roast chicken.”

Evie groaned, then suddenly started to giggle.

“What?”

 “Just remembered what you said yesterday.”

“And what did I say?” Some sentimental stuff, apparently.

“You said you’ve left a mess in London.”

“What’s funny about that?”

All memories of the night before when they finally took down Starrick were blur. Only after he had been on the verge of death did he realize how much he feared losing her. Maybe he did say something silly and sentimental, but now he didn’t give two hoots whether she’d tease him or not. He only wanted her to know that he had missed her – their cold wars always ended in the same way, not that he cared. He had even learned to take pleasure in it (“Get out, Jacob,” she said coldly when she found him in her room one night when they were eighteen years old after she stopped speaking to him for several days in a row because he had spent “more time than he should” in gambling dens, trying to ignore him until he pushed her against the wall and pressed his lips against hers. Evie seemed to be the type of person whose words and conduct were not always consistent; she was the one who held him down on the floor until she was done that night in the end). Only this time it felt different; he couldn’t tell exactly why.

“You admitted your own fault.”

“So? I was just telling the truth.”

She paused and looked at him, something intense and complex in her eyes. “I love you,” she said. He held her in his arms, suddenly feeling a knot in his throat. He couldn’t remember very well when was the last time Evie said “I love you” to him; for some strange reason, she seemed to intentionally avoid doing so.

“Have you thought about the reason why Father never mentioned Mother?” She asked, “at last I think I understand why.”

He didn’t reply, but his breath became heavy.

“I was thinking yesterday in the vault that…” Right at this moment he pressed one finger on her lips to stop her, hushing her quietly. “Shh,” he said.

Evie lifted her head and looked into his eyes, the clear blue in her beautiful eyes like clean crystal stream water, glimmering in the weak morning light. Was it tears? Jacob kissed the corner of her eye, feeling like kissing a petal of a rose after a chilly morning rain. He doubted that she would like this comparison. Evie would like something beautiful and powerful, maybe a cheetah? Or she didn’t like to be compared to anything at all (though he knew that she could be quite poetic sometimes). She seemed so delicate and elegant last night, a deceiving appearance that concealed her true nature (or that was her true nature too?). He did enjoy this rare femininity of hers and the sulking between them brought by the dispute earlier made her even more desirable.

“You were beautiful last night.” He had at least the luxury of being able to tell her that after the life-or-death battle yesterday. Evie smiled, “Only last night?”

To her surprise, Jacob blushed. Not that she expected her brother to be an experienced lover, but she couldn’t help snickering. “Well, I liked your dress.” He finally said. “Agnes picked it for me earlier yesterday,” Evie told him, “I’m not good at these things,” (The “things of women” in general? Neither of them was satisfied with the definition of “woman” of their time), but Jacob doubted that.

Evie paused for a moment and laughed out loud.

“You sound like a lover today.”

“That hurts.”

“Don’t be such a romantic, I can’t bear it.” For her, somehow Jacob was still the same little boy who held her hands tightly when walking home at night in a dark path, scared of the howls of owls in the woods.

“It was romantic enough of you to kiss Greenie though.”

“That’s different.”

“Oh?” Jacob stroked her hair gently, without saying anything.

Thinking back, that might the first time when he finally put down his pride in front of her. He wasn’t losing face anymore by admitting his own fault, but growing into a sincere, mature and down-to-earth man. Maybe that’s when he finally grew up. “It’s a pity that we didn’t open a bottle of champagne to celebrate that,” Jacob told Evie five years later when he came to visit her in India. Evie held him in her arms, pressing a long kiss on his forehead. “It doesn’t matter, I know anyway.” She said, “No matter how headstrong you are, I will always love you.” (Oh here it came again, her sisterly love). The village where she lived with Henry was at the bottom of a soaring high mountain, its peak always covered in snow, even in summer. They went hiking alone together two days before Jacob left for England and stayed the night in a tent in the middle of the bleak and desolate wildness near a primitive forest. The icy wind of the night roared outside their tent, the chilly air filtering into the narrow space where they held each other in their arms. He kissed her on her neck, vaguely feeling like going back to the seemingly endless primitive era before the dawn of civilization, an era in all its savage beauty. At this solitary point of space and time, all emotions seemed to be freed from the grip of the suffocating reality, becoming closer to its purest and most genuine state.

“Henry knows.” Evie said suddenly.

“Pardon?”

“He knows about us.”

“So?” His reaction was calmer than he had anticipated.

Evie smiled. “He knows, that’s all.”

Jacob had always liked Greenie, and knew that there was a true companionship between Evie and him, just like what’s between him and his sister. Did Evie love him?

“Maybe,” Evie was pouring milk tea into the cups, but paused with a pensive air, “It was more romantic in the beginning, like in the books. It felt new.” She said, “then, it became closer to my feelings towards you.”

Jacob wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Why she could leave him, but couldn’t leave Henry? He didn't know at the time that she would make a completely different choice many years later, nor did he understand what she meant until he met his wife. After spending so many years with his wife, he had finally come to understand her words, somehow. People stay together, for the fear for loneliness and solitude, for the need of company, for habit and dependency, until their lives fused seamlessly together and became an inseparable whole. But some bonds were deeper by nature, never diluted or weakened by time or space, only growing stronger through the valley of life or death. She was his flesh and blood, from the first instant of each other’s existence until the final dispersion of their ashes in the wind. They were not strangers who were brought together by chance, but each other’s very life.

Did that mean that they didn’t need to maintain this bond with each other by staying together? He would never ask her that. How could he blame her? How could he tell her about all his bitterness and loneliness, his suffering and sorrow in her absence, if he understood and respected every single choice she made, as the person he loved most in this entire world, and couldn’t be more certain of her reciprocity? And how could he take her for granted, if wasn't complete anymore without her?

At that very point of their life, that morning, however, when she was in his arms, her smell still lingering in his nostrils, he had never thought – that one day so soon, she’d left, to somewhere so far away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If we exclude the canonic Henvie thing as we fryecest shippers would unanimously agree to do, and try to cram frycest into the original storyline, I think Evie’s choice of leaving would be something very personal, at least that’s the approach I’d choose to explain her motives. It means it’s not about Jacob or their future together, but about herself as an individual. She’s a cool-headed, firm and resolute person that knows very, very well what she wanted and how to get it, an adventurer with an insatiable curiosity, so it does make sense to me if the very same qualities that led her to London in the first place would lead her to practically the other side of the planet when the opportunity presented itself. Jacob was more practical and focused on the immediate reality, while she had always been after something of a higher level, both intellectually and personally, and she was also more aware of her own pursuit. If the life in India could offer her the resources and opportunities of doing something that truly interested and mattered to her (say the study of the Assassins’ ancient heritage), I think she’d definitely put her own “career” first.  
> It doesn’t mean she didn’t love Jacob in the deepest way; think of the people who left home at a young age to pursue their own future and stay attached to their families throughout their lives. That’s what differentiates the standard romantic love and the simple, pure and uncomplicated human attachment which is independent of physical distance. I don’t think I’ve made it clear in this chapter so here’s this note that might explain better what I had in mind when I wrote it.


	15. Cedars

Evie didn’t have her own interpretation of “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” for a long time. It sounded like a dangerous indulgence (Evie hated indulgences, with exception). “It means we can do whatever we want,” Jacob murmured to the shell of her ear, his fingers caressing her skin, the kisses on her neck reminding her unaccountably of cedars in the wind. They were eleven years old and playing some game together in the backyard, the cedars swaying and wavering in the wind above their head in the same way, the howls of ravens from the distance mingled with some faint human voice, sounding like a woman calling for help. Jacob suddenly paused, raised the branch in his hand to her and said, “don’t move,” a nameless excitement and fear in his eyes. Evie had finally distinguished something she had never experienced before in that voice, her whole body trembling slightly, goose flesh on her skin, like a calm pond struck by a stone, the deepest mud stirred up to the surface, a turbid undercurrent coursing through her veins. She remembered reading the story of the prince waking up Sleeping Beauty when they were seven years old, two kids always perplexed by the apparently disproportional magical effect produced by a single touch of lips.

“Do you want to try it?” She asked Jacob one night when they were in bed. The two children often slept together when they were living with Grandmother, and after they moved in with Father, though they had their own beds, sometimes Evie would still let Jacob climb into her bed during the night and sleep with her. “You smell like sunned covers,” she told her brother, holding his soft little neck, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

Jacob was hesitating – he was always hesitating as a little child, timid and reluctant when Evie was around, a striking contrast to herself. After they grew up, though apparently Jacob had gone through a complete transformation, in Evie’s eyes, he was still the little boy who always waited her to grab the first piece of cheese before making any move.

“Okay,” he finally said. Evie closed themselves under the covers, their breath like two aimless little birds flapping their tiny and fragile wings in the air. Her lips found his, but broke the kiss in one second. “It feels wet,” she told him, apparently not very satisfied.

Jacob wanted to tell his sister, that if people all had wet mouths, then a kiss must be wet too, wasn’t it logic? But he didn’t say anything in the end. It felt completely different when they heard that woman’s voice from the depths of the woods that day, the cedars swaying in the wind, a seed starting to sprout, sending the first wave of shock to the surface of the soil.

Two years later, a girl who worked in the dairy shop they frequented – a gangling Irish girl called Aideen (“It means little candle in Irish”, she told the twins once. Though she always smelt of hay and cow dung in Evie’s memories, she couldn’t help thinking of golden butter, sweet-smelling hot milk and snow-white fresh cream whenever she heard the name Aideen for a long time), long brown hair and green eyes, always handing sweets to them – suddenly disappeared one day. “Folks in the town said she went home,” Jacob said once, with an odd expression on his face. “No one knows who’s the father,” one day after that, while Evie was waiting for the owner to finish scrapping the scales off the fish, she heard two women next to her whispering with a solemn air, as if talking about the death of William IV. She took the fish from the owner, couldn’t help but flush all over and strode away without knowing exactly where to go – she was still sharing the same bedroom with Jacob, but there was something more and more subtle and bizarre in the air between them before bed every night. Their first failed kiss at seven years old sprung to her mind the first time she kissed him out of that finally unbearable drive, and the urge to laugh was immediately washed away by another more intense and overwhelming sensation. It wasn’t so much a clear idea of what she wanted or what she wanted to do as an incredibly comfortable and reassuring wave, and she flew along with it, finally sinking into the soothing and spellbinding darkness of the abyss. Jacob was trembling – they were fourteen years old then and he was hardly capable of showing any self-control over anything, let alone the advance on the part of his own sister. Her fingers gripped tightly his own, pressed against her chest, her racing heartbeat sounding like a thunder in his own ears. He took a deep breath and was about to sit up when she reached out one hand and held it against his chest, hushing him quiet. They stiffened for a while, and she took his hand off her chest slowly, slipping off his bed and returning to her own bed. She didn’t know that Jacob stayed awake for a whole night.

“It would be funny if Father ever found out,” Jacob told her half-jokingly when they were studying a map of the conquered London that day. All boroughs belonged to them now, and some remains of the Blighters and Templars were still resisting the advances of the Rooks after the elimination of Starrick, but Jacob seemed so confident that he could even speak of these things while they were supposed to decide how he could manage a whole gang on his own once she was gone. Maybe he was a little tensed, she thought. Jacob pinned the map on the wall slowly, like the assassination wall they used to have, suddenly falling into silence.

“It would be nice if you could come back every now and then,” he said, “otherwise no one would be here to take care of my mess.” Evie thought of the time when she told him to be responsible for himself, and couldn't resist the urge to step over to him and kiss him on the lips. He responded her, his arm on her waist trembling slightly. At this moment Henry stepped into the carriage, Evie turned around and walked past him with her head down. “I need to pack the books,” she said, as Henry lifted his head and looked at Jacob, who shrugged his shoulders with a careless air.

A few years later, not long before Jacob arrived in India, Evie and Henry were visiting a doctor in Delhi and stayed in a hotel near the river. “I had already thought that I might be sterile after all these years with Jacob.” She told Henry one day after dinner when taking a walk. She felt that Henry stiffened for an instant, but then held her hand decidedly and resumed his pace as if nothing had happened, pressing a kiss to her hair. “Actually I already knew,” (“Are you sure he’s not saying it to make himself sound more clever?” Jacob asked her later, as Evie laughed and shook her head), he told her. “Now it has just confirmed my intuition.”

The young initiates she trained at the Indian Brotherhood all seemed intimidated by her aura of stern authority. Henry never told her that there was a rumor running among these children saying that she looked exceptionally dour because she didn’t have any child of her own, though she knew it clearly herself. “If only they knew that you could only be worse if you ever had your own child,” Jacob wrote in his letter with an awful tone. Evie supposed that he must be struggling with Emmett. “Wish I could kill him,” Indeed, he wrote in his next letter. “Don’t tell him (or Izzie).” At that time Evie would never have guessed that they’d meet each other again under those circumstances.

“I’ve missed you.” He told her when they finally saw each other after five years’ separation. He had never asked her back – maybe because he knew her so well and understood her determination? Not that it was some ambitious career that she chased after, but a rather personal choice of exploring more of the world and the possibilities of fulfilling her own potential. There was only one life, they both knew it, and it was for herself alone, for better or for worse. She thought of the time when they were fifteen years old, Jacob talking about leaving Crawley with that insufferable impatience, so anxious and distraught, like a wild animal in a cage. It felt like another life.

He had changed. She could tell that he had much more to worry about by just looking at his face, as running a whole gang in London wasn’t some frivolous affair. “You have changed too,” he said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “You are now an Indian woman who looks British.” Evie wasn’t sure about that. They held each other quietly in the dark, feeling the unstoppable passage of the time, the flowing sand between their fingers, a candle burning short, the very gradual disappearance of their lives without each other's company. The sun had just risen when they left the mountains for the village, the sky suffused with magnificent golden and pink glow of the dawn. “I wish I could stop the time.” He said, breaking the silence between them. She leaned in to kiss him, something salty and wet on the corner of her lips.

“Remember what I said!” Jacob suddenly shouted out loud to her before boarding the steamer with his initiates, quickly disappearing among the swarming crowd. What did he say then? Startled, Evie had however already lost sight of his figure. The cedars in the wind suddenly sprung to her mind again, as she watched the dawn alone in the docks that the steamer had just left from, tears streaming down her face.


	16. Saudade

Jacob found his first initiate in a biscuit factory the year when Emmett was born. “I have talked to Huntley,” He told Izzie, “he promised to take over the factory together with other members who have been excluded from the board once Wakefield is eliminated, and implement the working conditions that we proposed.”

“Personally I think that he’d just be very glad to see his opponent disappear, especially for a noble cause.” Izzie said, smiling with her usual delightful cynicism. She was the only daughter of a couple who owned a retail store in the City of London, having taken over the business from a young age following the death of her mother. “Old man wanted me to learn book-keeping, saying that at least I wouldn’t be living off of charity in case the shop is gone. It won’t happen.” Jacob had never hidden his true identity from her. They knew each other in the second year after Evie’s departure, he was drinking and playing card games with some Rooks in a pub when Izzie stepped inside briskly, ordering a pint at the bar.

“What do you think if I buy you a drink?”

The Rooks cheered excitedly in the background, applauses and whistles thunderous. Jacob didn’t buy drinks for every girl stepping into a pub.

“And what do you think if I buy _you_ a drink?”

Izzie stared at him with a smile on her face, as the cheers from behind became even louder.

“Izzie reminds me of Evie.” George told Jacob when they got married in Whitechapel. He had come specially for this occasion from Crawley and appeared to be somehow sentimental. Maybe because she was equally methodical and meticulous, always taking every factor into account before acting, ensuring the order of any subsequent change of the situation (“You can’t run a business without being cautious – even a small one.”  or “If you think the problems could be resolved by a blade, well, then you’re being irresponsible.” God, she was indeed another Evie). She was still occupied with her own retail business and had never received any training from the Brotherhood, but Jacob would always consult her about all the key matters. At least that spared him from any disastrous outcome which was usually the case when he was conquering London with Evie. “Thank goodness,” Evie wrote in a letter. Jacob vaguely sensed her familiar reproaching tone – apparently she thought that he was still unable to be fully responsible for himself, always in need of someone to deal with the consequences of his actions. He missed the time when she was still around and treating him like a child.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Izzie said when Jacob told her that she resembled Evie in many ways. Sometimes when he was lost in thoughts and memories, Izzie would give him a kiss on his forehead as she gently walked by. “Imagine me as your sister,” she would joke, and Jacob would smile and tell her to stop saying silly things. Was she really joking? On winter nights she fell asleep in front of the fireplace with a book in her hand, her long hair on her shoulders, her face calm and serene, inevitably reminding him of Evie when she had just lit up the fire in her carriage on raining winter mornings, her naked body wrapped loosely in her night dress, her kisses sweet on his lips. The rain in his memories never seemed to cease. Sometimes he would indeed imagine Izzie as Evie in the dark, as if the silence alone wouldn’t suffice to conceal his deepest desires. What would it be like if people could read each other’s mind?

Jacob rescued and adopted a child from Lambeth asylum not long after Emmett was born. “Very talented,” Jacob told Evie in his letter, “but there is still much to be done.” He didn’t mention what kind of efforts he must make. Evie replied that he sounded like a grown-up and couldn’t help but smile as she imagined his face when he read that. Jacob being responsible for children – as if he wasn’t one anymore. She would always let her sisterly instinct win out after their separation as the physical attachment was no longer available. “Feels platonic,” Evie joked in a letter. It didn’t mean that they didn’t miss it.

But it was true that they became more like a family during all these years (“As if we weren’t before,” Evie wrote). When Emmett was little, every summer, Jacob would send him back to Crawley Council and make him stay at George’s house. George told Evie in his letters that Emmett was totally another Jacob when he was little. “Ate all the cakes in the cupboard downstairs in the kitchen one night – didn’t let us notice, which is, as a matter of fact, remarkable.” He wrote, “Bakeries in the town would need some extra locks in a few years but I doubt that would work.” Emmett was, apparently, a rebellious and stubborn child, the hardest type to tame. Evie even took pity on both Jacob and Emmett as there wasn’t any sister that could act as intermediate between father and son. Izzie might help, probably. She thought of the time when Jacob stole some cakes from the market and hid them upstairs lest Father would notice, only to find them gnawed by mice one day when he was about to enjoy the treat. She made fun of this for a long time.

“This child is far too impatient to excel,” Jacob often wrote that in his letters. Evie doubted (as always) that he was qualified enough to make this judgement and suspected that she should destroy all the letters from Jacob where he mentioned Emmett so that the child would never get a chance to read them. “Oh it doesn’t matter anyway, as he’s already used to my telling him everyday how I feel about him.” She could imagine him laughing. “I should tell him how you used to be (and how you actually are) so that he wouldn’t get too upset.” She replied. Despite all his complaints, Jacob did perceive the particular talent for languages in Emmett and made the effort to provide him with the best conditions possible. “Maybe he can carry out missions in the continent in the future. Sent him to the Brotherhood in Paris last summer,” he wrote, “we had to drag him back with a combustion engine. I told him that you were reading Montesquieu at ten and now he’s dying to meet you.” Two years later, he told her that Emmett was studying German with an Austrian governess. “He doesn’t leave the maid alone if she doesn’t buy him Sachertorte, or whatever the hell it is called.” Evie thought of the French books in Father’s study, and was at a loss for a while.

On the contrary, Jacob seemed to have a preference for Jack the Lad, treating him as his own child. There weren’t many parents who were totally impartial, after all. Evie thought of her own initiates and was fully aware of that, but still couldn’t help but feel sorry for all of them. She particularly doted on Emmett when they finally met each other a few years later as if she blamed herself for being absent during his childhood, especially after the whole terror of Jack, though he was already almost an adult by that time. “If only you were on my side when Father was alive,” Jacob pouted, making her smile.

Their correspondence was rather filled with domestic details than projects or endeavors. Once she sent him some local tea, and he sent back a wool scarf, with the only purpose of making her laugh. That was not long before Evie received a telegram from him that autumn. “Izzie was gone last Thursday. Pneumonia. The doctor said she didn’t suffer too much.” Emmett was eleven years old then. “I want to come back to see you.” She hesitated for a long time in the post office after composing the telegram but finally managed to send it. There were another several months before Jacob replied, saying that there had been some major incidents within the Rooks and that he had had a hard time, apologizing for the delay of his reply. “Couldn’t sleep for several nights in a row sometimes. I sent Emmett back to Crawley at one point and he just came back a few days ago. Please don’t worry. Take care.” He’d never leave Emmett out of his sight since he was six years old in order to supervise his daily training. If he had sent him back to Crawley, the situation in London must have been almost out of control. She didn’t know that things could worsen to that degree in a few short years.

“Last time I saw Jacob, he seemed like a completely different person.” George told her in a letter. He wasn’t very well in the latest years (was anyone?), maybe his melancholic temperament had finally influenced on his physical well-being. She clutched at that letter, sitting next to the window, lost in her thoughts. Henry went by, giving her a long kiss on her forehead.

“You can go back to England,” Henry told her once, but didn’t seem surprised to see her shake her head. “My life belongs here now,” she said gently. All those years of this new life, her work and study, her initiates, her bond with this land and its people, a life she worked hard for and created with her own hands. “Evie Frye, I knew you are the adventurous type,” Jacob said when she told him for the first time that she’d leave for India, a shadow of sadness and resolution in his eyes. “It won’t be long before Emmett follows your path,” He told her in a letter when Emmett was sixteen years old. The same path of pursuing one’s own life and leaving her own family behind? Only on some quiet mornings when she had just woken up did she mistake in a daze the person lying beside her for Jacob. He was there, she could feel him, but he had disappeared from her tangible, physical reality, become a frgment of her memories, a vague impression in the back of her mind, the sunrise in Le Havre, a past that she could never go back to, a lingering saudade like a trace on the water. 

It was almost like a dream when she received his letter years later, asking her back in London.


	17. Stay

“Wait, I haven’t finished yet.” Evie said suddenly, giggling, holding his face in her hands and pressing another deep kiss onto his lips. There’s something tender and mischievous about her in moments like these, when she revealed her true self to him, a vulnerable, playful little girl totally at his mercy. Touched by this little gesture of affection, Jacob stopped unbuttoning her shirt, a wave of deep feelings towards her welling up from the bottom of his heart, something closest to what he imagined as romantic love. “Maybe you’re just manipulating me,” he said once. “You would never know,” Evie smiled, as if trying to sound mysterious. But she would never torture him with her playfulness. She loved him too much to be able to do that.

They quarreled a lot when they were younger, but it didn’t preven her from suddenly leaning in to kiss him sometimes when they were alone together. That’s when he would tense up, as if fearing that it was just his illusion. Evie barely tell him what to do in these moments. Her movement was always smooth and unwavering, only softened by his hesitation and uncertainty. “It will be fine,” she used to say, a gentle and soothing comfort to his most vulnerable self. Jacob had often suffered from the fear that she didn’t want him or need him anymore in the thick of their conflicts. He was still young at the time, unaware that the only reason behind this fear was his desperate need of her.

But Jacob had never told her how much he feared losing her, not when they went through the usual life-or-death dangers of their assassins’ life, nor when she was in his arms, her body tight against his, her gasps echoing in his ears, her sweaty strands of hair pressed against his own cheek. Something strange would happen in these moments; places he’d been to only once and dreams long-lost in the abyss of memory would suddenly spring to his mind again, with astonishingly clear and vivid details, as if his mind had floated to another space and time. They didn’t talk about what was on their minds in those moments. “Do you feel as if you’ve given your life to me?” She joked once. Indeed, he wanted to say. Sometimes he’d say I love you, not so much a solemn announcement as a weak, pleading murmuring. He felt so fragile and vulnerable in front of her, that he’d never be complete without her, like a piece of cracked glass that would inevitably break into thousands of shards. On so many dark and silent nights in front of the fireplace in his apartment in Whitechapel, Jacob would remember those raining cold nights in her carriage, the golden reflection of flaring fire on her naked body, as he flew along the waves of pleasure, sinking into its bottomless darkness. He couldn’t tell whether it was a memory, a dream or an illusion. Was depriving one of his memories a form of taking away one’s life?

They had been back to Crawley once before Evie left for India. The small pond in the woods where they frequented as teenagers was still there, Evie walking over to a small tree beside it, caressing its lush leaves and branches, a smile on her face. As Father was either in the Council or doing research about the Piece of Eden with Evie and Jacob was always off going about his own business, there were few opportunities for them to be alone together. One afternoon, Evie was picking up eggs in the hen house and Jacob tidying up the backyard, when she suddenly realized that Jacob had snuck into the crammed hen house with a timid air, and then, as if having mustered up all his courage, finally leaned in and kissed her. That was one of the rare times when he took initiative, and she’d never forget that raw and palpable sensation of the moment, the touch of his lips on hers, his hand on her shoulder, his scent intermingled with fresh grass and dust in the air, a moment stretched into infinity in that mundane background of domesticity. Five years later, before she left for India, on that cloudy and chilly day, they walked down a muddy road lined by trees, side by side, the fallen leaves soaked by rainwater crackling under their feet. Evie suddenly took his hand in hers, without saying a word. Throat tightening, heart throbbing with pain, he couldn’t say anything, not even turn his eyes to look at her. This time, she would finally be gone, and he had to let her go.

“I’m becoming more and more nostalgic these years.” She wrote to him in a letter, as if reproaching herself, but he completely grasped what she meant, and knew that she’d know that he would. “Do you remember Old Nellie’s pancakes?” He replied, half-jokingly. Of course he did. The little kitchen giving on to the garden, the wood desk painted in yellow and green, the whole set of china with printed roses and twigs. Old Nellie put the kettle on for the tea, the slightly charring aroma of the melting butter wafting out from the pan, Jacob with his elbows on the desk, standing on tip-toe, watching Evie pour a whole spoon of milk into the bowl with flour, sugar and fresh eggs. “I want some milk.” Jacob said. Were they seven or eight years old at the time? “You need to wait,” Evie told him sternly, just like Father. Old Nellie bent down, padded his head and gave him a cup of hot milk, and he gratefully poured it down his throat, purposefully making loud noises in front of Evie in an attempt to annoy her. Thousands of small moments like this shaped the way he interacted with her, as if the only way to gain her attention was to disobey and irritate her. Underneath the conflictive appearance of their relationship, there was this hollow in his heart that only she could fill, a lonely self in pain that yarned for her affection, a small child that would never grow up.

 “Emmett was worse than me as a child.” He told her. Evie just smiled, “Don’t flatter yourself.” She stayed in his apartment to take care of him after rescuing him from Jack’s nightmare, and had put the kettle on in the kitchen for the tea, just like Old Nellie. The familiar soothing crackling sounds of burning logs took him back to the childhood, lit by the golden lamp and surrounded by the aroma from the pot. If he asked her for some milk, would she put on a stern face and tell him to wait? “You can’t eat pancakes yet,” she said. Why? He thought faintly. “I made you onion soup.” She said, bent down to kiss his forehead, a strand of long hair falling to his face, as well as something wet and warm. Jacob wanted to hug her, but she just buried her face in his shoulder, her breath trembling.

"Evie?"

"Yes?"

"Would you stay?"

It was just like after they had a quarrel when they were children, when she'd tell him furiously that she'd not play with him anymore. "Would you stay?" Behind every hurtful thing he ever said to her, he could always hear himself pleading with her. "Would you stay?" Please stay. I need you. As the death gently approched, as the past two decades of their lives without each other vanished into the torrent of time, like the rainwater of a thunderstorm into a coursing river.

“I wish I had behaved differently when we were young.” She whispered to his ears, “I was being too tough with you.” Probably because the world for them then was either black or white, without middle ground, as they were incapable of recognizing either the complexity of the reality or each other’s hidden feelings that they found so hard to speak of without reservation in front of each other. Jacob stroked her hair, without saying a word. It’s alright, it’s not important anymore, he wanted to tell her. He needed her, more than he knew, more than anyone in the world, more than what he had been ready to admit, and it hurt, more than ever in her absence, as time went by.

"Yes, I will stay."

Nothing else in the world mattered anymore. Not their past disagreements, not her incomprehension of his true motives, not his clumsy and reckless attempts at gaining her affection. Nothing else mattered anymore. She was back, to stay, to bring him with her to their lost home, where they both belonged.


	18. Wound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: ABORTION
> 
> Please do not proceed if you feel uncomfortable with this subject.

Evie had an old injury on her waist. She didn’t remember its exact cause; probably it came from the fight with Lucy Thorne at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, or a simple mistake committed during a training session in adolescence. Or the damage to her body inflicted by the final battle against Starrick proved to be graver and more permanent than she thought it would be. At this age, memories became mischievous and impish, a kaleidoscope of unfulfilled wishes and deceptive illusions, suddenly appearing in her mind out of thin air when less expected, then fading away in silence like dying firework in the night sky.

Henry would help her bath in the worst moments of her injury. He’d gently hum a familiar rhyme behind her, his move tender and cautious, as if caressing a brittle porcelain statue of a sacred goddess, to whom a mortal man like him must devote all his veneration. It was exactly the attitude he held towards her; the silent, devout yet distant worship. His obedience wasn’t so much out of love as out of awe, a constant reminder of her alienness in this foreign land far, far away from her homeland and long-passed youth, a feeling she had soon learned to cope with or even relish. There were moments of tacit understanding between them, too; but then, she could always sense this undertone of moderate yet respectful distance.

She missed Jacob, missed how she could unreservedly scold him, missed his clumsy self-defence and grumpy retort, missed their aching closeness and intimacy in its wildest form, an indissoluble bond at cost of innumerable quarrels and endless sulking. They were so young, full of themselves, scrabbling around on their own to find their own paths of life that would inevitably diverge from their mutual past. How could they be at fault for not tolerating their differences? At least they had finally came to the realization that they were each other’s greatest blessing and strongest curse.

“Sometimes Lydia reminds me of you.” Jacob told her. “It often bewilders me, though. How can she have our opposite traits at the same time?” She was a miracle, like people always said. How could one understand, that love is the heaviest burden in the world?

Emmett wrote that he’d be back from Germany the next month. It was not long after they came back the last time, they must be missing her so much, especially Sarah. Evie had brought Emmett to the continent on mission several times after she came back from India, the frequency of her traveling with him only cut down in the recent years by his growth in competence and experience and the consequent increase in his responsibility and autonomy. It was after the terror of Jack that they finally met each other for the first time, Emmett in his late teenage years, in a curious awe and obedience to her, as if his respect towards her signified his contempt and challenge of his own father. “What a child,” Jacob sighed when they were alone, smiling. “Good for him,” Evie said, “At least he’d listen to someone, though that someone is not you.”

“Do you think he’d listen to me one day?”

“When did you listen to Father?”

They both smiled. Jacob fell into silence for a moment. “He was closer to his mother.” He told Evie once that Emmett didn’t cry when Izzie passed away, at least not in front of him. That stubbornness was undoubtedly hereditary in Frye family. Probably Emmett took Evie for his passed mother without realizing it, much less admitting to it, just as Jacob would never admit how much he needed her in a childish way when they were still young and proud.

 “Look at her, see how much she looks like you.” Jacob said that a lot since Lydia was still an infant. Lydia opened her big bright eyes in his arms, her look sharp and lively, reaching over for Evie. She smiled, holding her little hand. Lydia was born with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, unlike her own mother. Sarah was blond with green eyes, tall and powerful, silent and meticulous. Jacob told Evie that Sarah resembled much to Izzie, and Evie had thought that Emmett probably still needed a mother figure, the one missing in their own childhood.

In the second year after Evie’s departure from India, she received the news that Henry had disappeared. He was hiking through a rocky soaring mountain together with other members of the Brotherhood on a mission, a bleak and bare territory said to be Gods’ sacred domain. The few that came back alive mentioned a blizzard, but Evie had always believed in a superior power that dominated the mortal’s destinies through invisible strings. When she told Henry that she’d go back to England, he nodded, giving her a long, long hug before she finally left. Maybe he knew, deep down, that it was the last time they saw each other in this life. Sometimes she’d wake up in the middle of the night, her mind full of each other’s company all these years, her tears uncontrollably rolling down her face. Jacob would be awaken sometimes too, hugging her gently in silence, pressing a long kiss on her forehead. She understood how he missed his passed wife, how grateful he was for her company all those years, in the same way he did their father and the mother they’d never met.

 “Do you remember I told you I was infertile, when we were in Crawley?” Evie asked, after Jacob joked for the umpteenth time how misleading it was that Lydia resembled Evie with each passing day. Crawley, it felt like another life.

“Hm…?” Jacob was busy preparing dinner for Lydia, half-distracted, logs cracking in the oven, the hot air in the crammed kitchen filled with hazy smoke.

“I had a child.” Evie hugged him from behind.

His body stiffened at that instant, turning around slowly, a look in his eyes she’d learned to understand after all these years. It wasn’t regret; their life wasn’t about regret. It was an understanding and love so deep that it made her quiver, something she knew she would die for in the blink of an eye.

“You never told me.” He said quietly, having understood what she meant.

“I told you I couldn’t conceive.”

“It’s not true.”

 “It became true, at one point.” Evie smiled. “We were sixteen. Three years later, I was pretty certain that I couldn’t conceive anymore.” Memories were never precise or trustworthy. They were chaotic fragments, thousands of barely recognizable glimmering shards in the dark, flowing along waves of emotions. She only remembered the pain. “I talked to someone in the pub. They took me to the right person.” It was in a shabby but tidy cellar, the woman who did it was stark and reticent. Her hands were callous but warm and gentle, the only comfort almost negligible amidst all the overpowering pain that was tearing her apart, a sort of pain that she had never known of even as a trained assassin. She must have exhausted all her willpower and strength to restrain herself from giving in to that torture. Right when she thought she was about to collapse, it was over. The woman brought her a bowl of hot milk, without saying a word, only nodding slightly to her before she thanked her weakly and left, keeping on washing the blood from the tools at the sink.

“I never saw anything.” Only blood. She didn’t even know what it was. It was discovered at the earliest stage possible, and she had had a fast recovery. Nor did she remember if that woman had said anything at all. “Take care,” probably. She had already forgotten her face.

Jacob’s fingers tightened on her arm. She knew that he understood perfectly why she never told him or anyone else. She wanted to take on that burden alone, their burden, the one of shame and guilt that they were condemned to take. Evie raised her head and looked into his red rimmed eyes. When they were young, he would blame her to conceal his own pain and guilt, accusing her of making such decision on her own with no regard to his opinion. But now, it was different.

“You know, you could have-”

“Yes, Jacob,” She smiled nonetheless, fingers gently stroking the damp corner of his eye. But back then we were young, and we still believed in many things.

That it was fine to be thousands of miles apart, without staying by each other’s side. That she should simply leave and give him a chance of living a normal life, where he didn’t have to hide his secret in the shadow, permanently looking over his shoulder. That they were still young, still had plenty of time, this life was still long, stretching into infinity.

Even though they could reverse the time, they would still have made same choices. They were still too fearful of the world, too proud to face each other and themselves.

He slowly took her into his arms, holding her tight, a gentle sigh on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally I don't think Evie had children in the original storyline, nor does she strike me as someone who would. When I wrote chapter IV where it was first mentioned that she couldn't have children, I thought it to be congenital. Then I just changed my mind, just like that. I probably just wanted to make it more dramatic. Remember that the author is not responsible for your suffering caused by reading this hideous work because she said so.


	19. Dear Lydia

“Your father, is a great man, Emmett. However, he has also been living in pain. Please do not be too harsh on him.” This is what your grandaunt once told me when I was young. I know, Lydia, it has been several years since they both passed away, but every time I remember something she told me, my eyes always sting with tears. She was to me what a mother to a motherless child. You always called her granny when you were little, and had stuck to that no matter how much we insisted that you should call her grandaunt, and your grandaunt Evie would never get angry or offended, instead always smiling at you when you called her that. My father, he had seldom been as harsh on you as on me when I was young, always straining merrily to meet all your demands. My own childhood memories were an endless succession of training, criticism and wounds opening, curdling and scarring, fresh and old alike. I know, you have been through the same - this is the obligation and mission of our family. But we have all experienced that moment - the moment when you realized that this is the life you have always been aspiring to from the bottom of your heart, the innermost source of your motivation and strength.

It was during a freezing winter night in Hanover, the first time we went on mission together to the continent when she told me that. After your grandaunt returned from India, she took over the supervision of my training and since then had brought me on mission several times to the continent, and it was during our first mission that she told me, that my father was a great man who had always been living in pain. I remember it clearly; the mission target was to destroy a warehouse of the Templars located in Hanover. Many of my memories of those years are blurred and turbid like the dark seawater in a moonless night, but I can remember that mission so well, as if it happened yesterday. At that time, Jack had just been eradicated - don’t think that I can say the word “eradicate” with ease or lightness. During my whole childhood and adolescence, to me, Jack was like my own elder brother. I know that my father treated him as if he was his own child, cherishing his talent and competences probably more than he did mine. Your grandfather would always tell me, Emmett, observe carefully Jack and his moves. Emmett, don’t be brash, have you seen Jack’s stealth and patience? That’s what I hope to see in you. I still remember how sometimes Jack would secretly bring me my favorite pastry from the bakery, and was found out by my father, who would say, Jack, don’t spoil Emmett without my permission. Sometimes I would be plagued by jealousy and sullenness because of my father’s favouritism, but I could never be resentful towards them. People say that Jack was a madman; I know what he had done to my father, to the Brotherhood. But I don’t think he was mad. He had a heart colder than the cruelest winter, harder than the strongest steel, but by no means could we judge him by normal standards. He simply wasn’t like you and me, but he wasn’t mad. He was just different, and dangerous.

Your grandfather sent me away to Crawley that summer, where my granduncle George lived. He never talked about what was going on in London, nor did we have any news from London for several months. I was seventeen years old at the time; can you imagine my despair, helplessness and fear? Betrayal was different from death. Betrayal is a more complete and radical overturn, something that challenges and threatens your entire capacity to judge and to choose, forcing you to question the legitimacy of your whole belief and existence. The world you were used to was no longer the real world, the emotions you believed to be genuine were nothing more than a display, and your belief was twisted, trampled underfoot and mocked mercilessly, so you started to doubt, doubt everyone around you, doubt the rules of the world, and doubt your own reason of being. To me, Jack was that sort of crisis. But we human beings need to survive. We need to carry on living in an apparently coherent, logical and real world, but whether this imaginary world that always makes sense coincides with the reality or not is an entirely different matter. As I said, Jack was no madman. He simply betrayed us.

After what seemed like an eternity, news arrived from London. My father was alive, and my aunt Evie, whom he had been mentioning to me since I was little, was back. She was back and saved everyone. You know, Lydia, I had never met her before till then, but the look on my father’s face when he mentioned her, that strange look of visceral awe, admiration and tenderness, of deep pain and longing, was what made me understand that she changed his life forever and would continue to do so. My parents were very in love, Lydia. The blow brought to my father by my mother’s death was no less heavy than that brought by Jack’s betrayal. But I knew since I was very young, that somewhere far away, there was someone that my father could never let go, ever. My aunt Evie would come back one day, because there was a thread between my father and her, an invisible thread that surpassed time and space, surmounted established rules and mundane norms. They were together, no matter how far away they physically were, and would always be. No, there’s no innuendo in my words; nor am I interested in making arbitrary judgement. That simply isn’t the point. I think you know that more than me, Lydia. You grew up beside them, and have learned from them what is true love. They could die for each other in a heartbeat. There was not a single force in this world that could weaken or dilute their attachment, not even death, nor even the oblivion at the end of time. This is the only power that connects us mortals to the immortality.

That day, when I met her, I was back to my father’s apartment in Whitechapel, the door half open, a sweet aroma of onion soup wafting from the kitchen. I pushed the door open and walked in, my father lying on the bed, so frail and exhausted, so vulnerable. I kneeled down beside him, holding his hands, tears dripping down my face. I heard footsteps coming from behind me, and I turned my head around and saw your grandaunt Evie walking over to me. I would never forget the way she looked that day. Your grandaunt was a great woman, Lydia. She was stern, proud and authoritative, but at the same time, she possessed a quality that made her truly invincible - compassion. She harbored a deep, heartfelt empathy and love for the world. This empathy and love for people, combined with her unparalleled, unbreakable will strength and power, was what made her a great person.

My father used to tell me that when they were young, he was brash and reckless as I used to be, and that my aunt would always reproach him for it, which brought upon them endless quarrels. But, however fierce the conflict between them was, he said, she was like his other half; he would have committed far more severe mistakes were it not for her. And your grandaunt Evie, told me that day, on that wintry night, Emmett, your father has always been living in pain, please do not be too harsh on him.

For so many years, I have been thinking, why would she say something like that to me. At the time I was still simmering with pain, a pain brought by Jack - on one hand, I felt that the validity of my belief was completely uprooted, on the other hand, my jealousy towards Jack had finally found a dark outlet. If my father had noticed the dangerous aspect of Jack’s behavior and done something about it, horrible things like that wouldn’t have happened. Of course I was blaming my father - we were always blaming others when we were young. But Lydia, you have to know, your grandfather is a brave, righteous person that is no less great than your grandaunt Evie. His extraordinary valiance, his outstanding strategic and executive capacities, his deep sense of justice and fairness, led him to free London from the grip of the Templars, to establish order and to create a future for the most unprivileged and disenfranchised. I simply refused to see and value him as he deserved, because I was proud and obstinate. I have been thinking - thinking about the premature death of his own father, about my aunt Evie’s disapproval of his methods when they were young, about their separation over twenty years, about my mother’s death and Jack’s betrayal, about my own incomprehension of and distance from him when I was young. I think, that my aunt Evie understood him. She understood his pain. The way she looked, the way she stared into the distance when she said that, those tender, melancholy and sorrowful eyes, made me understand, that her too, suffered from the same pain. I couldn’t and still can’t really understand their pain - no one can truly understand the pain of others, but at least we can do what your grandaunt Evie did; we can try to share that pain, to bear it together with others. To empathize, to be human. They were extraordinary. I thank God for bringing me into their lives, a miracle I’d be grateful for till the day I die.

“You cannot choose whom you love,” She once told me, “but you can choose to do the things you believe to be right.” I am proud of you, Lydia, and so were they, because you stay loyal to your belief, the belief that you can bring freedom to others through your own hard work. We cannot choose many things in life - we cannot choose whom we love, we cannot choose the constraints and limitations imposed upon us by the circumstances, nor can we even truly choose our own reactions and actions, to some extent. We simply obey our instincts and set out to do the things we believe to be right, even though from a different perspective, they may not be the best choices. But what are the best choices anyway? We have only one life, and in some sense, all the choices we have made, were the only choices we had. I keep wondering what my father and my aunt felt about their own choices. But there is one thing I couldn’t be more sure of: they loved each other more than their own life. I will always miss them as you do. I know that they are still together, and will always be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I finished this shit


End file.
